Prognostication, Anyone?
May 19th, 2008 at 9:33 am by Susie
Kevin Drum talks to Mark Kleiman about the potential of Obama’s fundraising list:
Mark has a list that includes things like copyright reform, hedge fund taxation, credit card regulation, and so forth, but it strikes me that he’s putting the cart before the horse here. I chatted with him about this on Friday, and his basic argument is that Obama has created a spectacular money machine that he can call on at will. Got a congressman who’s nervous about voting for healthcare reform because he’ll lose the support of the insurance industry? No problem. President Obama can send out an email to his list, raise a couple mil overnight for the guy’s reelection campaign, and there are no more worries about the insurance industry. Ditto for telecommunications, entertainment, and high tech cash.
This sounds great, but I’m skeptical. Obama has been raising enormous amounts of money from small donors, but he’s been raising that money from people who are enthralled by Barack Obama and are willing to donate money to help Barack Obama become president. Once he actually becomes president, however, a lot of the thrill goes away. Partly this is because once the deed is done, the deed is done and people move on. Partly it’s because the real-life Barack Obama is going to have to make compromises and tradeoffs just like any other real-life politician and his supporters will inevitably become a little less enthralled by him over time. Partly it’s because people who are willing to donate to the Obama campaign aren’t necessarily also willing to instantly open their wallets for other people just because Obama asks them to.
Plus there’s this: Although Obama, and to a lesser extent online organizations like MoveOn, have been able to raise huge amounts of small-donor money, “huge” is a relative term. The amount may be big compared to my house payment, but compared to the cost of an entire election cycle it’s still fairly small. This means that big corporate donors are going to stay pretty important.
Still, it’s an interesting topic. Just how far is the small-donor revolution going to take us? I’m not convinced Mark is entirely wrong about this, but I’m not really convinced he’s entirely right either — and it seems like a conversation that’s worth having in public, not just as party chitchat. Should big corporate interests be feeling scared right about now?
No, really. Let Daddy take care of it. Give Daddy the money and the power, and everything will be fine. Daddy was Fred Thompson, or Codpiece, but now it appears to be Obama.
This issue is really bugging me. I don’t understand why the fuck people can’t see this, even if they are Obama supporters, and realize that nothing good will come out of this concentration of power. And yes, money is power.
This is just more of the blackmail and extortion that has been the dominant theme of politics in these United States, and I don’t see a Teddy Roosevelt rising up on the horizon.
I don’t understand why the fuck people can’t see this, even if they are Obama supporters, and realize that nothing good will come out of this concentration of power. And yes, money is power.
the reason why i’m not concerned about “this”, at least the “this” you seem to be referring to in your comment, is because:
(1) the party’s presidential candidate is the de facto leader of the party. he (or she, but it looks like he this time) always is. and that means setting the fundraising priorities and strategy going into the election. in other words, obama claiming the mantle of the party is nothing sinister, it’s part of what happens when we have a nominee.
(2) obama, or any other party leader, can’t control where i or any other democrat sends their checks. if you’re going with “money is power” then that fact demonstrates the limits of obama’s power. this isn’t an enforceable power grab. you can still write checks to whoever you want, and there are still quite a lot of groups out there that aren’t part of obama’s party apparatus.
those two reasons are why i think all the talk of obama’s powergrab are overheated and unnecessarily alarmist.
that being said, i also think K misses kevin drum’s point. i don’t think he’s talking about obama’s stranglehold on democratic fundraising, but rather pointing out another limitation to obama’s powers. that is, he’s countering the idea that obama will control all fundraising on the democratic side this season because obama donors are interested in donating to obama and not necessarily every obscure local race that obama may point to. i think drum is saying the opposite of your “this” in that first comment. maybe i’m misreading his post, but that’s what i see when i read it.
Holy shit, did Snuzy just use a capitol letter?
question: is this an issue only because money/fundraising will now be handled not according to the clinton-machine playbook??
i don’t see the point of the concern unless to say “big bill”-type (see: DLC) financial management is now over.
again,
every nominee takes over the DNC to run as they see fit,
they have a huge influence.
anyone getting the vapors now is just demonstrating that they–rather than the supposedly brainwashed obama supporters–are the ones that are naive.
Funny how the “Clinton money machine” wasn’t evil when it helped get Obama elected to the U.S. Senate. The Clintons were the Obamaa’ BFFs then.
Funny how the “Clinton money machine” wasn’t evil when it helped get Obama elected to the U.S. Senate.
i don’t think they were evil then, and they’re not evil now. i’m not a big fan of any machine, but i also recognize that it’s very hard to be successful in modern american politics without one.
the point isn’t who we get to label “evil”, the point is that there’s nothing nefarious when a new presumptive nominee’s machine takes over from a former president’s machine. neither is evil, it’s just part of passing the torch.