More from The Democrat Deal and Huffington Post on Russ.

The Deal with Russ Feingold's new advocacy arm of Progressives United (Run, Russ, Run)

Our favorite potential candidate to run against the President in the 2012 Democratic Presidential Primary continues to do the peoples' work. And do so very effectively. What we like most about this new advocacy group is the way the former Senator from Wisconsin is going to run the reporting. This type of organization, a 501(c)(4), can spend and raise an unlimited amounts of money and do so without disclosing the identities of the individuals and/or organizations who donate. This is not the Russ way. He will walk the talk. The tight disclosure standards he has put in place will set contribution limits and allow for public access to the identities of all funds raised and spent.

Transparency of money in politics. There's a concept.

The following article comes to us c/o The Huffington Post. It closes by stating Feingold and his people will be deciding on whether to run for the open WI Senate seat left by Sen. Herb Kohl by the end of the Labor Day weekend holiday.

The Democrat Deal was made aware earlier this month that this is not precisely case. The former Senator was a great Senator and would undoubtedly serve with equal distinction if re-elected. However, there are different dynamics afoot.

Democrats are increasingly vocal about their displeasure with the President's performance. The recent debt ceiling sell-out deal to the Tea Party controlled Congress is a palpable case in point. It is no longer just the progressives and party activist who are clamoring for an alternative to the President in the 2012 Democratic Primary. Presently, the majority of all Democrats want a primary challenger. Among the field of men and women who could step into history and reclaim the Democrat Party and reclaim America for working families and the middle class, - one name has been gathering the most buzz: Russ Feingold.

To the people of Wisconsin, we agree, Russ would be a stellar choice for the Senate. But we ask you, for the sake of our country, help us send your prodigal son to the White House. It is time for a democrat in the White House, it is time for Russ Feingold for President.

for the original Democrat Deal post go here.

for the original Huffington Post article go here.

Russ Feingold Expands Progressives United, Launches Advocacy Operation
by Amanda Terkel
WASHINGTON -- Former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold is expanding his Progressives United operation, launching a 501(c)(4) and a new website on Monday morning. The organization will now consist of a political action committee for political work and a nonprofit for advocacy efforts. And although a 501(c)(4) is allowed to spend and raise unlimited amounts of undisclosed money, Feingold is promising to practice what he preaches by setting up strict disclosure requirements and contribution limits for his group.

Feingold launched Progressives United in February. Since then, it has raised more than $2 million. The organization was designed to support progressive candidates at the local, state and national levels, as well as hold the media and elected officials accountable on combating corporate influence in politics.

The PAC has raised more than $200,000 for the Democratic candidates in the Wisconsin state senate recall elections, and it organized a campaign calling on President Obama to fire General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The new nonprofit arm will allow the group to do more advocacy work, allowing the PAC to concentrate on political work. The PAC will be posting new endorsement criteria for candidates and asking supporters to nominate possible individuals they would like to see Progressives United endorse.

"It's clear people are fed up with the way corporations are running our politics and our government. Progressives United is taking the next step to fight back," said Progressives United Executive Director Cole Leystra.

Feingold has been one of the Democratic Party's most vocal critics on the issue of whether to accept corporate contributions.

Speaking at the annual Netroots Nation conference for progressive bloggers and activists in June, Feingold said the Democratic Party was "in danger of losing its soul" if it did not adopt stricter regulations on campaign contributions. He singled out Priorities USA, a new Democratic independent expenditure group, or super PAC, that is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate cash for political purposes.
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The nonprofit that Feingold is forming, known as a 501(c)(4) in the U.S. tax code, is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of undisclosed money as long as its primary focus is not politics.

But Feingold is placing extra restrictions on his new organization. It will disclose 100 percent of its income and will not knowingly accept any money from corporations, national banks, labor unions, federal contractors or federal or state lobbyists. It is also swearing off independent expenditures, electioneering and the "issue ads" that are popular with outside groups. No contributions above $10,000 per individual per year will be accepted.

The group says it is also putting up firewalls between Progressives United Inc., the nonprofit, and the Progressives United PAC. While they will share resources and staff, they will be financed and fundraised for separately, and they will engage in distinct activities. On Aug. 1 of congressional and presidential election years, all non-administrative operations will be conducted and financed through the PAC.

On Monday, Progressives United supporters will receive an email announcing the launch of the new website.

"With elections coming up in Wisconsin next week and around the country soon -- and with corporate money already flowing into politics through shadowy front groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads -- we had to launch our new website right now to get these important grassroots tools into activists' hands as soon as possible," reads the message.

Feingold has said that he will decide by Labor Day whether he will run for retiring Sen. Herb Kohl's (D-Wis.) open U.S. Senate seat in the 2012 elections. Progressives United staff insisted that the new announcement is an extension of the senator's long fight for campaign finance reform, not any indication about his political future.

Russ Feingold should run against Obama (and Palin)

c/o The First Post

Alexander Cockburn: The US needs a mutiny. And the senator from Wisconsin is the man to lead it

By Alexander Cockburn

So much for 2010 as the year of mutiny, when the American people rose up and said, "Enough! Throw the bums out!" As the dust finally clears after the midterm elections, and the bodies are hauled from the field of battle, guess what? It was all so predictable. The safest thing to be in 2010 was an incumbent. 

Out of 435 seats, 351 incumbents will be returning to the House in January. In the Senate, out of 100 seats, 77 incumbents will return in January. As the libertarian Joel Hirschorn puts it, "Welcome back to the reality of America's delusional democracy where career politicians will continue to foster a corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional government because that is what the two-party plutocracy and its supporters want for their own selfish reasons."

Now it's on to 2012, through a largely familiar political landscape, right down to Sarah Palin telling ABC TV and the New York Times that yes, she might just go all the way and run for the Republican presidential nomination.

It's the only ray of sunshine currently available to Barack Obama, now seemingly mesmerised by the verdict of the press - that the people have spoken and the President must "move to the centre". Onto the butcher block must go entitlements - Medicare, Social Security. The sky darkens with vultures eager to pick the people's bones.

As Obama reviews his options, which way will he head? He's already supplied the answer. He'll try to broker deals to reach "common ground" with the Republicans, the strategy that destroyed those first two years of opportunity.

What do the next two years hold? Already there are desperate urgings from progressives for Obama to hold the line. Already there are the omens of a steady stream of concessions by Obama to the right.

There's hardly any countervailing pressure for him to do otherwise. The president has no fixed principles of political economy, and who is at his elbow in the White House? Not the Labour Secretary, Hilda Solis. Not that splendid radical Elizabeth Warren, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the Republicans are already scheduling for destruction. Next to Obama is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the bankers' lapdog, whom the president holds in high esteem.

In the months ahead, as Obama parleys amiably with the right on budgetary discipline and deficit reduction, the anger of the progressive left will mount. At some point a champion of the left will step forward to challenge him in the primaries. This futile charade will expire at the 2012 Democratic National Convention amid the rallying cry of "unity".

But the White House deserves the menace of a convincing threat now, not some desperate intra-Democratic Party challenge late next year by Michael Moore or, yet again, Dennis Kucinich.
There is a champion of the left with sound appeal to the sane populist right. He was felled on November 2, running for a fourth term as US senator and defeated by a Republican. He should rise again before his reputation fades. His name is Russ Feingold, currently a Democrat and until the present Congress expires in January, the junior senator from Wisconsin.

I counsel him to decline any job proffered by the Obama administration and not to consider running as a challenger inside the Democratic Party. I urge him, not too long after he leaves the Senate, to spread the word that he's considering a presidential run as an independent; then, not too far into 2011, to embark on such a course.

Why would Russell Feingold run? Unlike Teddy Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1979, Feingold would have a swift answer. To fight against the Republicans and the White House in defence of the causes he has publicly supported across a lifetime.

He has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His was the single Senate vote against the Patriot Act. His was a consistent vote against the constitutional abuses of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

He opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the bank bailouts. He is for economic justice and full employment and thus a champion the labour movement could support, as opposed to Obama, who triumphed in 2008 courtesy of union money and grassroots organising and who has kicked labour in the teeth ever since.

Feingold is the implacable foe of corporate control of the electoral process. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January was aimed in part at his landmark campaign finance reform bill.
A Wisconsin voter wrote to me in the wake of the election, "Feingold likely lost because his opponent's ads, including billboards with pictures of him and Obama, as well as TV and radio ads, and last-minute phone bursts, convinced many voters that he has been a party-line Democratic insider all these years."

What an irony! Feingold has always been of an independent cast of mind, and it surely would not be a trauma for him to bolt the party. Ralph Nader, having rendered his remarkable service to the country, having endured torrents of undeserved abuse from progressives, should hand the torch to Feingold as a worthy heir to that great hero of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, who ran as an independent for the presidency nearly a century ago.

The left must abandon the doomed ritual of squeaking timid reproaches to Obama, only to have the counselors at Obama's elbow contemptuously dismiss them, as did Rahm Emanuel, who correctly divined their near-zero capacity for effective challenge.

Two more years, then four more years, of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and "working together"? No way. Enough of dreary predictability. Let's have a real mutiny. Run, Russ, Run!