Activist Groups Prepare for Left-Wing Democratic Takeover

Far left-wing activists in the Democratic Party plan to shift a Barack Obama administration far to the left of the spectrum on everything from civil rights to energy to taxes, and beyond.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, in "Liberals, Sensing Victory, Try to Pull Obama to Left," nothing is off the table:

A phalanx of liberal think tanks and interest groups - anticipating a Democratic victory on Tuesday - are mobilizing to push Sen. Barack Obama to the left of his campaign positions....

A number of the economic and social prescriptions being pushed on Obama advisers would require greater spending that almost certainly depend on raising taxes -- threatening Sen. Obama's campaign promise to cut taxes.

The Campaign for America's Future, a progressive Washington group founded by a former adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential bids, is organizing a conference for this month on creating a government-funded investment fund for public works projects. The Center for American Progress recently released a two-year, $100 billion plan for producing renewable energy, and its president, former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta, has been tapped to lead the Obama transition team.

Last month in Washington, an organization recently formed by Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil-rights leader, attracted more than 100 leading activists on poverty and other social issues to a daylong conference. Mr. King demanded that the next president appoint a cabinet member dedicated to eradicating poverty. In a keynote address, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs called for substantially higher tax collections to fund government investments in energy production, public works and eradicating poverty and other ills.

Sen. Obama's energy and economic policies include many of the same goals, but the senator says he will pay for his proposals with savings from cutting bureaucratic waste and ending the Iraq war.

The Center for American Progress likewise backs higher taxes based on a "pro-growth" structure steering funds to schools, health care, job training and technology innovations. Mr. Podesta's organization is one of several interest groups working with Mr. King's Realizing the Dream Inc. to push the federal government to cut the poverty rate in half over the next 10 years. The Census Bureau estimates that 12.5% of the population, or 37.3 million people, earned poverty-level incomes last year.

In addition to Messrs. King's and Podesta's organizations, other partners in the umbrella group, called Halfinten.org, include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, which has endorsed Sen. Obama and conducted a voter-registration drive that has drawn criticism from the McCain campaign, as well as federal and local investigations, for fraudulent names submitted in some states....

Some groups already have emerged as Obama advisers, such as the Potomac Coalition, a collection of African-American former Clinton appointees and Senate aides, that advises the campaign on the economy. The members, many of whom now work on Wall Street, urged Sen. Obama to back the addition of homeowner assistance and a contracting provision for minorities and women in the $700 billion rescue of the financial sector.

This report confirms something I've said all along: That an Obama administration will be captured by radical groups seeking to hijack the state in furtherance of an extremist agenda:

...an Obama administration will push an extreme-liberal policy agenda of tax hikes, spending windfalls, economic stimulus, spread-the-wealth redistributionism, universal health care, infrastructure investment, fairness doctrine, global warming legislation, restrictions on gun rights, abortion on demand, embryonic stem cells, foreign importation of prescription drugs, union card-check voting, trade protectionism, precipitous Iraq withdrawal, ban on domestic wiretapping, opposition to mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, sex-education for kindergartners, race-based affirmative action, expanded welfare entitlements, radical education pedagogy, and enemy appeasement diplomacy with no preconditions (and more).

As we can see, this agenda is by no means far-fetched.

In an essay last week, progressive agitator David Sirota pledged to battle centrist elements in the Democratic Party and to "sweep out" Clintonites and moderates from the party establishment and get a "whole new crew in there."

That crew will be filled with the very radicals conservatives have warned about all year. Democratic activists are simply confirming what has been the main ideological battle lines of election 2008.