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Change Big Donors Can Believe In
Change is at hand. Barring a repeat of the protracted Florida recount of 2000, there will be a victor soon in the U.S. presidential election.
With the economic crisis, change is something in your pocket that you want to hold on to.
The campaigns are not dealing in small change, though. Their coffers, particularly the Democrats', are swelling with larger and larger bundles of cash, ensuring that politicians will remain beholden to special interests and wealthy donors. Don't hold your breath waiting for the extended television discussions of this, because it's the broadcasters who profit the most.
Barack Obama broke records with recently announced September fundraising levels that exceeded all predictions, bringing in $150 million. Since Obama opted out of the public financing system, he can spend freely from his war chest right up to the election. John McCain accepted public financing and has limits imposed on his campaign, with $84.1 million in public money to spend in the general election. McCain is now outspent on advertising by the Obama camp by 4-to-1.
The Obama campaign has "flooded the zone" with advertising. It has a full-time "Obama Channel" on Dish Network. Ads have been inserted into video games like "Guitar Hero." The campaign has bought a full 30 minutes of prime-time airtime on NBC, CBS and Fox, six days before the election. Fox moved the start time of the World Series to accommodate the ad buy.
Obama's campaign is credited with receiving an unprecedented number of small donations from among its historic 3.1 million donors. Campaign manager David Plouffe says the campaign's average donation is under $100. A Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows, though, that only a quarter of this vast number of donors fall into the "small" category (under $200), which is a smaller percentage than that achieved by George Bush in his 2004 run.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign contributions, the funds raised in presidential campaigns has skyrocketed. The 1976 campaign, the first campaign that included public financing, saw a total of $171 million raised (about $570 million, adjusted for inflation). The current campaign weighs in at close to $1.6 billion, and the group expects the total to reach $2.4 billion. While donations to candidates are supposed to be limited to $2,300 for the general election (an additional $2,300 is allowed for the primary season, per candidate), huge loopholes exist. Most notable are the "joint fundraising committees," in which the presidential candidate partners with his party to form a fundraising organization. McCain and the Republican National Committee's is called McCain Victory 2008 and can receive donations as high as $70,000, which then get distributed to the presidential campaign, the national party and to key state parties. Obama and the Democratic National Committee created the Obama Victory Fund, to which donors could give $28,500. As The Washington Post just reported, the Democrats found that sum too limiting, so they created the Committee for Change, which allows donors to give up to $65,500. That's a helluva lot of change.
Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, told me, "What is wrong with this is, after this election, the people have bundled and put together big pots of money are going to come back to whoever is elected, and they will be looking for access and influence."
The $2-billion presidential race also guarantees vast profits for the broadcasters, the national networks and the local television stations. Hundreds of television stations are using the public airwaves, imposing themselves between the candidates and the public.
Access to the public airwaves for political candidates should be free. Says Buzenberg: "Every local television station I have been to, I say, ‘How do you do in election years?' They say, ‘We buy new cameras, new sets.' It is a huge benefit to them. The commercial broadcasters are cleaning up this year like never before, and you'll never hear them questioning the system that allows so much money to come back to them."
Is public financing of campaigns dead? A year ago, Sen. Obama said, "I have been a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests." Regardless of who the winner is, the next president will enter the White House with a long list of major donors to thank.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
- Posted in
84 Comments so far
Show AllWhen the bubble burst, Senator O'Bama was busy depositing donor checks.
Why not just restrict all TV and radio political advertising to C-Span and Public Television?
Why not just restrict all TV and radio political advertising to C-Span and Public Television?
That is a good idea for a start, unfortunately any attempt at implementing a system based on fairness, is seemingly doomed in the US despite how laughably bad the current situation is, with it being left up to Letterman and Jon Stewart to ask the “tough questions”.
I really can’t understand how you let it get this bad. I wouldn’t buy a flower pot based on the sort of limited information and propoganda you get during campaigns.
We simply haven't been paying attention is my opinion. The majority have been getting just enough to maintain their "lifestyles" and have been working like heck to tread water.
This economic train wreck will put us back on the straight and narrow I believe. Saving, spending less for less (especially for junk)and I believe paying a lot more attention over the next few years to getting government back on track.
No back to the land living or riding bicycles instead of driving cars, no A/C, few people want to live like that here, but real progress will come from this. (I think)
As long as people don't freak out, the should be a fairly soft landing into a fairly permanent-without-change recession, then finally a lower capital economy.
Also, as long as people don't freak out, this whole situation should lead to further movement "left" -meaning further democratization and assurance of social welfare- instead of causing a sharp turn right.
This is why my signature reads "Don't Panic", just like the large, friendly letters on the cover of every copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Will people stay cool, start paying attention, get involved, and then work together to do the necessary work to create a sustainable, democratic, and enjoyable future?
Sure hope so.
(But they WILL be riding more bicycles, whether the want to or not)
Don't Panic,
-matti.
I miss my bike, even if the spokes did break fairly often from my huge weight. Alas, it was stolen on campus last year :-(
I wish you hadn't mentioned "huge weight" and "bike" together.
Haha, strangely I never lost weight from biking, only from walking.
I believe its going to be much deeper and longer myself. Something like a centipede recession and the shoes just started dropping.
But I'll dust off the old mountain bike, just in case.
Yeah, maybe where I wrote "fairly" I should have written "relatively".
I actually don't see any way out other than a "green" boom, a permenant lowering of total available capital, or fundamental systemic change.
I'd actually be looking forward to it all if it wasn't for so many individual people and families and small enterprises entering into this with so much debt.
I have a sneaking suspecion that it may end up being Mr. and Mrs. Corporation that ends up eating a bunch of the credit card debt.
Wouldn't the inflation coming next year help out there on debt? Did last time.
I see no reason not to expect a green boom. I think you are right, capital will be tight for a while. Want a loan? Better have perfect credit and some assets for a bit.
Actually Obama's quote in the final paragraph -from his "pandering to the 'base'" days- would help quite a lot.
Public financing and free TV time.
But in the end, structural change on a large scale will likely be needed.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Government and politics in the U.S. -and in many of its States and localities- has been corrupted so badly that it is facing SYSTEMIC BREAKDOWN.
Reform from within may not just take to long, it may be IMPOSSIBLE. People in the position to reform have had to get there by way of two of the most corrupted portions of the overall system -elections and lobbying (understood in the very general to include "think tanks" and "pressure groups" and any Citizen push on Government).
We have Structural Problems here.
An analogy would be to a City sewer system. So much awful stuff has flowed through the pipes for so long, and so many twists and additions have been applied beyond the original design, that almost none of it is working right anymore.
Flushing the pipes with cleanser will do nothing to fix the leaks. There is no use in sending people into the system either -too many leaks and too many deviations from the plan- anyone attempting a repair from within will become lost and befouled.
So what is to be done?
The obvious answer is to shut down the sewer system. The obvious response to that is that we NEED it -nothing runs without it. And the equally obvious counter to this counter is that it's not working anymore and it's drowning us in shit.
How would a City actually go about solving this problem?
Wouldn't they stop using the old system?
Wouldn't they put a temporary "triage" system in place?
Wouldn't they design a new system?
Wouldn't they incorporate the best parts of the old one?
Wouldn't the new plan need to be approved by the public whom it will serve?
Couldn't we do ALL of this in our situation if we only saw the need and possessed the will?
I try not to get too excited about all of this -because I just end up bashing myself to a stupor against everyone's preconceptions like an animal in a cage.
But I sincerely believe -based on long observation- that excessive power for private "media", 220 years of Legal Precedent accessible down to the minutae by use of modern computers, amoral and non-objective Judges filling the Federal Courts, rampant corruption in the Congress, a Standing Military on permanent conflict-readiness for 60 years, and a giant Bureaucracy that gives the Executive more power than the combined Pharoahs of Egypt...*inhale*
...have all worked together to inhibit the purpose of our Constitution and bring on structural collapse and systemic breakdown. This is all on top of the very compelling argument that our Republic's Constitution and our Nation's constitution have -in the intervening two centuries of social, economic, and political evolution- become seperated from each other. And furthermore, that this seperation is perfectly Natural and was in fact PREDICTED by the Founders -including Jefferson- who gave us TWO "escape clauses" in the ratification of the 9th and 10th Amendments.
I think that everyone who thinks things have gotten totally corrupt. Everyone who would like to see big, BIG changes. And all those who would go so far as to desire a Revolution, should remember something:
Because our Federal Constitution was written by some of the most Revolutionary thinkers in one of the most Revolutionary periods of modern History, it is quite, well, Revolutionary. We have the opportunity to have peaceful, legal, Revolution in the United States.
We can call for a NEW Constitutional Convention and a NEW Constitution.
Surely this is a better idea than Seccession or violent or extra-legal Revolt?
The only thing needed is for the People to see the NEED.
We have examples of success in instituting new Constitutions from several countries in S. America. We even have an example of the People inhibiting changes that they thought went too far (Venezuela).
Now I'll go back to patiently waiting in my cage of preconceptions for people to wake up and see the Light.
Don't Panic,
-matti.
Holy hell that's a long winded reply! (by me)
*steps off soapbox and sheepishly walks away*
Soapboxes are great. Keep it up!
Just covering up for having nothing else to say.
But thank you.
/begin hijack
You remind me of my favorite story about "soapboxes".
It's a Wobblie story. The Spokane Free Speech Fight. Utah Phillips used to tell it -it's actually on that album he did with Ani deFranco.
City of Spokane got tired of agitators -especially union agitators- speaking on soapboxes on the public sidewalks (for the usual anti-worker reasons) so they outlawed it.
That didn't sit to well with the IWW, so they mobilized. Men came from all over to Spokane and they set up a soapbox and one-by-one got on it and started speaking, and were one-by-one arrested and taken to the City Jail. There ended up being THOUSANDS of them in there. Those men raised all kinds of ruckus and gave the jailers all kinds of hell, but the City held out.
Until finally, the people of Spokane rose up to complain about the extra COST of feeding all these Wobblies -three squares a day by Law- to the City Budget, and therefore to the Taxpayers.
The Jailhouse was emptied, the men left free of charge, and the ordinance against Free Speech was rescinded.
Now there's a story to give you hope in the basic concept of democracy and the power of determined people to bring about change peacefully.
Of course it is from an era before Police Agencies were Paramilitary Sub-units of the Federal Government, before jails were advanced machines for repressing the human spirit, and before Cities could run defecit budgets on imaginary money.
But still.
.Why not make all political ads free to all candidates for office? The airwaves remain the single biggest ripoff of publicly owned property in our history and, as we own them, we can darn well expect a bit of return.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Yeah, I've suggested the idea before.
And that's why we need people like Nader and Mckinney ! Shame on Ms. Goodman for exluding 3rd parties !
Do you mean just from this article?
Its focus is on large donations to large campaigns.
DemocracyNow is about the only place on TV to give fair coverage to the small parties.
And Ms. Goodman was to be the moderator of the failed (due to ridiculous excuses) "Third Party Debate".
Sounds like she's included "3rd parties" quite a lot to me.
Hmmm, perhaps I was a bit too hasty on this judgement. My apologies. Just can't tell anymore who supports what these days. And I'm still trying to get over the craziness in my neighborhood when even potential Nader voters are blindly giving up and going Obama. Sad.
Did you here that the "third party debate" is back on -in some form- for tonight?
There talking about it "upthread".
Dear Amy,
Please research your subject matter before you write an editorial and make yourself look - well - as dumb as Sarah Palin.
Obama's war chest comes from millions of small donors like me who have been pumping small amounts of money from our household budgets into his campaign for months. I'm not big oil, big-pharma, or big anything. I'm just "Joe Six Pack" and I know that the only way to defeat the Republicans is for many people to get behind the best candidate - financially and otherwise. Why don't you trying doing just that instead of making accusations?
I agree. If this was an election between respectible but determined candidates (3rd party or otherwise) then public financing would be ideal. Unfortunately it's not. This is a boxing match where we know for a fact that one of the boxers will have razors in his gloves, will try to bribe the ref, muzzle the commentator, and incite hatred in the crowd.
But which one? The Dems play just as dirty as the Repubs if you look at it honestly.
Try getting a Green or Independent candidate on a ballot where there's a Dem sec of state if you want to see every dirty nasty political trick in the book.
And Obama has run just as nasty a negative campaign as the Republicans. From someone who supports another candidate, I see very little difference in terms of who's worse. For instance, they've run a lot of nasty messages of hate and fear about how it will just be the end of the world if McCain wins. All garbage of course.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
You're being dishonest and you know it. You must be a Repub troll.
I disagree. Samson is one of the posters I definitely read on here.
.Do you believe that because you have evidence or because you resent the way he exposes what you believe to be a lie?
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Her article appears to be well-researched to me.
She cites data that only a quarter of his funding came from donations of $200 or less.
The whole private-donor based politics of the USA is outrageous and profoundly undemocratic. Few or none of the real democracies around the world use such a system.
I only very rarely donate to political campaigns - in situatons where the candidate is clearly being deliberately locked out of the system - such as Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nader, or my local Democratic congressional candidate who is being shunned and left un-funded by his own party because he supports single-payer healthcare and getting out of Iraq without conditons.
Homework: break down who is behind the campaign donations. Do that and then get back to us.
I love the smell of napalm in the morning...
Watch out...they'll be looking to draft you. (lol)
I WILL GO UNDERGROUND, CALL MYSELF A WEATHERMAN AND YOU KNOW THE REST... LOL
truthaddict and RichM are both absolutely correct. I believe a couple of his largest donors were Goldman Sachs and the University of California system. ( I think)
Now, was that so hard to admit? Paul Street has an excellent book out about Obama and he comically asserts that his middle name is Goldman Sachs.
I read part of that I think, a friend had it....whats the darn name of it?
I have no illusions about Obama, but I'm voting for him.
Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics
http://www.amazon.com/Barack-Obama-Future-American-Politics/dp/1594516316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224795297&sr=8-1
Thanks. That was an easy order.
Brilliant book. I've been reading it lately already. Highly recommended.
Warning, if read by an open mind, the facts in this book might shatter some delusions about Obama.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
OBAMA TOP CONTRIBUTORS
” You gotta dance with the one who brung ya ”
Read this also...
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003343
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/05/america/bundlers.php
.
Dear dmia,
Her accusations are correct. You're exactly what Obama is hoping for: someone who believes in his message of change and that he has revolutionized public participation. Escape this illusion that Obama is our last hope from escaping the clutches of the evil Republicans. OOoh scary. People like Obama, Pelosi, etc. are a bunch of frauds and they continually convicne people like you that they're somehow different from the Republicans.
Who's been in control of Congress over the past two years?
What has been accomplished over the past two years?
Also remember, while Kucinich, Nader, Paul, Mckinney, etc were fighting for your ass Obama didn't think twice about lending billions of your tax dollars to the people that fucked you over in the first place, even though most Americans were against the bailout, Dem and Rep alike. Thanks for representing the interests of the people, douchebags.
You're what I call a "Munchausen Progressive". I think no matter who got elected, Obama, Kucinich, McKinney, you'd always find a way to paint them as part of some sort of dishonest cabal out to get you. You enjoy the "suffering" you experience being an outsider who knows "the truth" about what's going down. Grow up and get a life.
Nothing like making things up, assigning them to others, and then using them as an excuse for ad hominem attacks, is there?
Straw Man to the rescue!
Not ad hominem. I'm saying there are people whose bottom line isn't to come to a conclusion in a discussion, but only to prolong the discussion for some other reason. In the case of Munchausen Progressives, I'm saying they're not so much interested in helping people by taking positive steps, however small, like electing Obama. But rather they're really only interested in being iconoclasts, and perpetually being outsiders. You already see this with some posters here on CD who accuse Kucinich of all people of being just another Dem lackey.
What I don't get is this vaguely stated belief that Obama would provide any small positive steps. This is the myth the Democrats are spreading. They are running a pro-war, pro-corporate candidate that is so far to the right that he agrees an incredible amount of time with McCain. But then there's still Dems running around with these unsupported fantasy statements that pretend he's really some sort of improvement.
----------------------------
"To know, and not to do, is not to know"
www.samsonsworld.blogspot.com
Hopefully they'd stop trying to kill the Endangered Species Act and kick polluters out of the EPA. I also don't think a Democratic White House would censor every scientific assessment done for them.
Well, I thought the "grow up and get a life" part seemed a little ad hominem-y, but maybe not.
But your still dealing with a Strawman.
That poster made no mention of the kind of things typical of what you are labeling "Munchausen Progressives".
So, to bring that up only to smack it down and pretend it has something to do with what the person you are responding to actually wrote is classic Strawman technique.
I think your idea about "Munchausen Progressives" has some merit.
But what you don't seem to be understanding is that many people who ARE "interested in helping people by taking positive steps" and who post on CD, do NOT see "electing Obama" as such a step, not even a "small" one.
It seems that you see working within the Dems -and perhaps the "two-party system" in general- as part of working for Progress. Others see -and present a lot of evidence showing- the Dems as a HINDERENCE to Progress.
This is quite a significant point of contention and will need a lot of "discussion" before we can "come to a conclusion".
Thank you Matti, for actually comprehending what I said. I'm not making myself an outsider and I'm not a "know it all." I clearly supported Kucinich, Nader, hell even ron paul to an extent. Most people agree with the pelosi comment. I WANT Obama to be positive and I hope he's lying about half the crap he says, but the fact is he's been making horrible decisions while the people i have mentioned have been busting their ass to help Americans. To label me without proper proof and to say I would oppose Nader even though I CLEARLY supported him 100% in my comment is complete ignorance. What happened, did I piss the "Obama-lover" gene off somewhere in there?
I agree that a person who at a gut level realizes the bankruptcy of capitalist electoral politics, but has not yet made the leap to advocating an entirely different system of organizing society, is in many ways an absurd and pathetic thing to behold.
Agreed, Kane.
I would add to your views that electing Obama isn't just a small step, but a first step. I am seeing, from many corners, the realization that much of the responsibility for what is happening falls in the lap of the people - meaning, us. If we wish to live in any kind of democratically controlled country, we have to start stepping up to the plate as individual citizens. Simply throwing ourselves on our horses and madly riding off in all directions while shouting accusations is worse than useless - it's destructive.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
A "step" toward what - bombing Pakistan? Making the military bigger? Giving a trillion $ to Wall St. crooks? Keeping same-sex marriage illegal? Subsidizing more nuke plants? Keeping the PATRIOT Act in place?
For the love of all that's holy, what in heck is the progressive "step" offered by Obama?! It'll be a third term of the Bush administration, only I suspect people like you will stop complaining about it.