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Killing the Money Primary
July 4th's Washington Post featured a front-page story about how campaign contributors heavily favored Democrats in the three-month period that ended last weekend, giving three dollars to the party's leading contenders for every two dollars they gave to the top Republican candidates.
Barack Obama was the big money primary winner--with 285,000 total contributors since January, exceeding the combined number of donors to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain
While I think it's fascinating that Obama has had such success in raising money from small donors on the Internet--and see glimmers of democratization in how those small-$ donors are challenging the primacy of political finance's big guns of politics--I still question why the mainstream media seems to privilege the money primary at the expense of the ideas primary.
So what is to be done? On the money front, the New York Times counsels resuscitating matching public funds --"the once-popular tax assisted alternative that has been allowed to wither in recent years because of Congress's fixation on the power of private campaign money." But there is another alternative. Clean Money, Clean Elections -- with legislation supporting this major and viable reform advancing now in both the Senate and the House. In the Senate, the Durbin-Specter Fair Elections Now Act (S 1285) and in the House, the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act of 2007 (HR 1614) both have impressive co-sponsors. On the House side, of the 40 co-sponsors, many are in significant leadership positions.
But it's not only inside the beltway. According to Public Campaign, which has been working for ten years to change the way America funds elections, the movement, outside of Washington, continues to grow. As Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign's longtime and tenacious President puts it, there's a vibrant and growing citizen-centered movement out there that reflects America's diverse communities. From the AFL-CIO, to the National Council of Churches, the Sierra Club, the Dolores Huerta Foundation and the NAACP -- all have joined forces in support of Clean Money, Clean Elections and the legislation advancing it. MoveOn.org is also wholeheartedly behind the effort to enact reforms that have worked well in Arizona and Maine to the Congress.
What's hopeful, though not reflected in the breathless coverage of the candidates' fundraising totals, is that seven daily mainstream newspapers -- including the Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, and the St.-Louis Post Dispatch -- have specifically endorsed congressional public financing legislation. Moreover, the race at the local and state level to take out private money in favor of clean money is moving full force ahead.
Next time you read about the money primary, take a breath and go to publicampaign.org and find an alternative which will give ordinary people and voters a chance to have their voices and ideas listened to.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation. She is the co-editor of Taking Back America--And Taking Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004).
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
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8 Comments so far
Show AllRemember: Dennis Kucinich is NOT in the "money primary"; he is in the "issues primary". Your choice, Progressives....
Clean election systems have the promise of changing our current system of rule by the money, to rule by the many.
The inability of our government to act according to the will of the people can only be restored if the people elected to office are no longer compromised by special interests.
Clean elections systems are already working in Arizona and Maine. These systems have made elections more competitive, fair and free candidates from spending most of their time fundraising.
Please support efforts at the local and state level to institute these campaign finance reforms.
If you go to : http://www.publicampaign.org/clean-facts you can lookup up your state organization that is working on the clean election system. Please support these organizations as a way to improve our representative government.
Brown, I couldn't agree more; Kucinich is, once again, the only candidate who is talking issue(s)like Single Payor Health Care System. I used to work in the health insurance industry and I can tell you horror stories as bad or worse than you'll hear in "Sicko", which is a "must see" for all Americans. Kucinich ran in 2004, too, but no one remembers and he was touting clean elections system way back then. The reason that you're not hearing about this issue, or others, for that matter, is that media telecomm is all corporately owned and clean elections are absolutely contrary to their interests. They have big friends, like Clinton, who was no Democrat, and who passed the 1986 Telecomm. Act. Congress also does not want clean elections because their incompetent family members won't be able to get cushy high paying lobbyist or defense contractor positions, like Feinstein's husband for instance. The real joke is that anyone who has been fooled into believing in the "American Dream" has been dreaming themselves.
Does anyone actually care what Vanden Heuvel - or the dinosaur Nation - thinks? They haven't had a new idea in decades. Back the dems no matter what. Gee that's intellectually interesting - not.
It's time that the media starts showing the money raised by candidates from 'non-corporate entities' so that the public can see up front who the largest corporate sycophants are.
Cutting edge, a lot of Nation writers backed Nader in 2000.
As 'cutting edge' suggests, it has been a while since The Nation pointed the way forward. But then, the mere name of the magazine should tell you that their focus is less than global. Once more, we are told that we only need to tweek this or that, and everything will be better, even though it is obvious that the extant American political system is profoundly corrupt. Virtually the entire congress are war criminals for what they did to Iraq and Afghanistan, for starters. This, despite mass protest by the millions who could see through the lies, even from a distance. There is no solution to the worlds' problems within a capitalist framework (if you have one, let's hear it!), but the likes of Vanden Heuvel will always offer false hopes.
This story reminds me that people still believe that one can join the military and change it from the inside.
Only when our friends at "The Nation" stop with the trivial easy way stories and begin to help plan active non-violent protests with the help of its writers and lawyers and organize with labor to change the system, can we even pay any more attention to them. "The Nation" is a distraction now from the real work that ought to be done.
Let's ask them for the help; we know they can give it to help in reviving our inalienable rights. Planning and organizing for active non-violent resistance is hard work. Many hands make light work.