Dean's Grifters Outflanked by Ickes, Soros

Hard on the heels of E.J. Dionne's article yesterday about the Democrats' problems with getting a single message across comes today's piece by Thomas Edsall about a new Data Mining project launched by Harold Ickes and George Soros. Harold Ickes was my boss in my troubleshooting days in New York at the time John Podesta worked for me. Ickes is heads, shoulders, and upper torso above John Dean and his busy band of grifters trying to take over the DNC get-out-the-vote operation.

The basic gist of the piece is in the last paragraphs, with the lede buried at the end:

In addition to Soros's support, Ickes has the financial backing of some of the wealthy participants in a new fundraising group called the Democracy Alliance. He and Quinn, who will be chief executive of Data Warehouse, have hired technology specialists from internet retailer Amazon.com and a Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer project.

Quinn had worked on the voter file program under McAuliffe, but Dean brought in his own people after he took over in early 2005.

These included former Dean presidential campaign workers who formed a company called Blue State Digital, now under contract with the DNC.

The reason Hillary, whom the article describes as the eminence grise moving the chess pieces incognito, wants Ickes and Soros group in position is for her 2008 presidential try.

It's no secret that DNC Chief Dean is regarded as incompetent by many leading Democrats, but his posse taking over the DNC operation hints at his own ambitions and also a backdoor to make money for himself.

But Hillary's move gives Karl Rove something else to obsess about!