Liberal activist group MoveOn.org announced today that it has raised more than $500,000 (in less than 48 hours) and continues to recruit volunteers on behalf of Sen. Russ Feingold’s struggling campaign.

The George Soros-funded organization called Feingold “a progressive hero” and has made salvaging his Senate seat a “top priority.” (They certainly have their work cut out for them).

“Red alert: The latest polls show that Senator Russ Feingold could lose in November,” read an email from MoveOn.org. “… There’s no better, more principled Democrat in Washington than Sen. Feingold: The only senator to vote against the Patriot Act.”
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, in an email to his group Democracy for America, called a Feingold loss “unacceptable.”
DFA, which reports raising $120,000 in 24 hours for Feingold, is sending its national field director to Wisconsin for the final three weeks to coordinate volunteers from inside and outside the state. MoveOn plans to reach its in-state members using call centers from around the country.

This comes after recent reports that some of Hollywood’s biggest names — Stephen Spielberg, Harvey Weinstein, David Geffen and Michael Douglas, among others — had shelled out in support of Feingold. Weinstein and Douglas’ contributions were actually over the $5,000 limit and they had to be refunded the difference.

Feingold’s vocal opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his lone ‘nay’ vote against the Patriot Act, has endeared him to many devoted liberals, especially those frustrated with President Obama for not being liberal enough (apparently such people exist).

It would be a fittingly ironic way for ‘Mr. Campaign Finance Reform’ himself to (potentially) end his career — scrounging after hefty checks from deep pocketbooks in Hollywood and special interest groups like DFA and MoveOn.

“You learn a lot about a peson when their back is to the wall,” writes Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. “This week, we learned how ‘independent’ Russ Feingold really is. Either he’s selling himself out to the extremist left to save his career, or they’re rewarding him for his reliably liberal votes in Congress. Either way, Wisconsin is about to ‘move on’ itself with a new senator.”