Politico on the donor boycott of the DNC over gay rights failures

Politico:

“Clearly, money talks,” said John Aravosis, a gay activist and prominent liberal blogger who, along with several other influential bloggers on the left, has launched a donor boycott of the DNC. “Money seems to be our best leverage in a lot of ways.”

Aravosis’s frustration stems from the Nov.3 Maine ballot initiative where voters rejected same-sex marriage, an outcome many gay rights activists thought might have been avoided had the national party weighed in and dedicated resources to the fight, instead of deploying them elsewhere.

“Ultimately, what I want is for the party to be so freaked out that they keep their promises to us,” Aravosis told POLITICO, noting that the gay community had been disappointed with the White House’s policies. “The goal is to change the party’s thinking.”

“For the gay community, typically the party looks at us as a cash cow or an ATM,” said Aravosis, the editor of AMERICAblog, who referred to the bitter loss in Maine as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Politico also notes that Markos at DailyKos is also advising the Netroots not to donate to the DCCC, but rather give to good progressive candidates directly. As Markos notes, the party organs will be using most of your donations to help conservative Democrats. Better to help progressives ourselves. Same goes for our boycott. Skip the DNC, skip Obama, skip OFA - donate to good progressive pro-gay candidates (even though President Obama was such a candidate during the campaign, and now far too many of his promises, on far too many issues, have been broken, or cut in half).