Earlier this week Chris Cillizza, writing in The Washington Post, reported on a new 527 organization called Majority Action, which is targeting Republicans Jim Walsh and Deborah Pryce and plans on targeting other potentially weak Republicans between now and election day.

[Joe] Andrew and Don Fowler -- both former Democratic National Committee chairmen -- anchor the group's leadership circle, which includes a panoply of former lawmakers, including past Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairmen Tony Coelho (Calif.) and Martin Frost (Tex.).

Majority Action is aiming to raise between $8 million and $10 million, though as of June 30 they had brought in only a little more than $200,000. Yet as a 527 organization, Majority Action will be able to raise unlimited soft money contributions, so their fundraising target is not by any means unbelievable.

It's good to see former Democratic lawmakers with track records of success getting back into the mix, though questions remain about the groups tactics. Cillizza cites a portion of the text of one of the ads, but the group does not appear to have a website or its ads available online for evaluation. What's more, while Coelho, for instance, had great success during the 1980s and House Democrats were able to break precedent by picking up seats in 1998 while Frost was DCCC chair, the political landscape 10 and 20 years was significantly different that it is today, and I don't take for granted that the tactics that worked then will work now (or that any of these powerbrokers have completely adapted to today's political world).

Just throwing a ton of money into races isn't going to win back the House for the Democrats. In 2004, 527s spent big on behalf of John Kerry, and we all know how that turned out. That said, if Frost, Coelho, et. al. are able to take the lessons they learned decades ago and combine them with the technological advances of this century (setting up a website one can find on Google would be a good start), they could help make a difference in enough close races to help put the Democrats over the top.

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So I'm going through Lieberman's FEC filings, just to get a sense of who's giving to him.  If you've never combed through the FEC database before, you really should pick a few Senators on either side, go to FEC.gov, and just scroll through the donor list.  It's eye-opening.

Anyway, I'm working through Lieberman's list, and I come upon this donation by Martin Frost.  It's dated 9/25/2005, and it shows that he gave $1000.  He lists his employment as US Congressman and his employer as the US government.

Martin Frost lost his reelection campaign in 2004.

A couple of other interesting and less pathetic nuggets: Andre Agassi gave a full double max $4200 to Senator Lieberman, as did legendary venture capitalist John Doerr and Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrielli.  Many of Lieberman's big donors (and there really are only big donors) come from the finance, technology, and defense related fields, and in particular the executive calss.  Lamont sees more from entertainment, media, academia, and engineers.

More soon.

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We are going to have to take over the Democratic Party from within. I don't agree with people that think the party is dead or worthless. I look around at what we are doing here in Philadelphia, I look at the momentum still steaming along from the Dean campaign and the meet-ups, I look at how much influence the blogosphere has obtained...and I have to conclude that the Democratic Party is being revitalized. But, we are dealing with some serious obstacles. Our biggest obstacle is the influence of the Clintonistas, the DLC, and Dems with major ties to the military-industrial complex and other big anti-regulatory corporations. We can see this in the loathesome Adam Nagourney's latest piece, Hey Democrats, Why Win?

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