On Demand
Online Campaigning
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Glenn Reynolds , the man behind instapundit, and Adam Green, of MoveOn.org, discuss the role of online organizing in this year’s election.
Event: Today's guests are participating in next week's Personal Democracy Forum. Brian will be there too!
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Geez- The online fund raising was SO successful that Mr. O-Ba-Ma can now choose to opt out of the public funding of his campaign! And this, after pledging, and vigorously seeking the pledge of the Republican candidate to use ONLY public funding-
And then there is of course the 'No-Muslim-Women' shown in the background of his last speaking event...
So Geez again- Sounds like a 'Machine Politician' to me! Not much 'change' here!
OK- So NO experience- No change- and NO beef!
In Texas- this is referred to as: 'All hat- and NO cattle'!!
Obama changes his tune yet again...
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/the-early-word-obama-opts-out-of-public-financing/index.html?hp
I wonder how united those two Muslim women feel.
Has the kool-aid worn off yet?
PUMA Democrats, unite!
Join the swelling ranks:
www.pumaparty.com
AND then of course- there is the O-Ba-Ma campaign's attempt to 're-tool' sweet, dear and soft spoken, Ms. O-Ba-Ma!!
OH Yes! -America will definitely want to vote in Ms. O-Ba-Ma to be America's 'First Lady'.
Perhaps- if O-Ba-Ma does make it to the White House; the title for his wife can be changed from 'First Lady' -to First Loudmouth'!
Ms. O-Ba-Ma is clearly irascible! <-(That's the 18-dollar word for: ANGRY!!)
I imagine the vast majority of people who want John McCain to be the next President also want Obama to accept public financing. The more partisan among them will cry "foul" and "hypocrisy" even as they normally decry public financing and government in general as opposed to the free market.
So Jesse - I suppose you're all for McCain continuing the Dear Leader's Glorious Eternal War to Resubjugate Brown People?
O-Ba-Ma...
A 'political opportunist', well on his way to becoming a 'political hack'!
Obama would be stupid to not take full advantage of the amount of money he can raise. The money is coming mostly from small donors so in a way it is a movement from the "people."
I personally have no problem with the people fuding someone to defeat the Republicans.
Why question a strategic advantage? (I think Brian secretly doesn't really like Obama, so I'm not surprised at all by this segment.)
This is politics, not a court of law. No one is under oath. Obama is great, but not perfect...he says so all the time.
I'm glad he's not continuing the Democrats losing ways.
McCain has declared that he won't police 527 activity on his behalf -- tens of millions of dollars worth of activity that would defeat the whole purpose of public financing.
With his 1.5-million-person (and growing) donor list, Obama's campaign will be more "publicly financed" than the so-called "public financing system."
@8 (the other Steve) - agree with all of that.
@9 - let's hope this time Obama goes on, and stays on, the attack - McCain has lots of flaws that will make great ads.
And for examples of Glenn Reynolds' putziness see this post (and others at Instaputz) - http://instaputz.blogspot.com/2008/06/um-no.html
should public campaign financing be redesigned to just provide seed money for web-based fund rasing?
I've often heard from the "conservo" pundits that George Soros, a hedge fund multi millionaire is a major force behind moveon.org, any comment to the truth or fallacy of that?
$65 average donation? Please.
That's a misleading statistic if there ever was one. How many millions has MoveOn collected from George Soros and the like?
I think Obama is a decent guy and I like him, and I feel the same about McCain (or did until the last few years of catering to the base). But you see Obama doing all these traditional things, the big money, the grovellng at AIPAC, the reaffirmation of the embargo on Cuba - things that make me ill, things McCain has been doing for years and Obama now for months.
I think just having a black man President is in its own way radical, almost shocking and definitely amazing. This is probably making Obama even more lame, more safe to balance or innoculate himself from tthe inherent difference his candidacy represents.
Oh Glenn - nice way to work in a Rezko reference! I don't suppose your favorite president (Bush) ever bundled, do you?
Check out the effect the Al Gore endorsement has had on Obama's announcement. Until this week, I had only received one phone call & one postal mailing from the Obama campaign. And I'm not hidden; I've given to Democrats and women's causes by phone & by mail for 30 years and over the Internet for 8 years. However, I'm on Al Gore's "green" email list & since Monday, I've gotten three emails from Al Gore urging me to support Obama. Did those emails bring in a lot of money -- and new names? Did that have an effect?
I agree with the sentiment that Obama going with his own ability to raise funds from the public using mostly small donations is more representative of a democratic system for acquiring money than relying on fixed funds from the government. At least the people are actually voting with their pocket books in a way, it is unfortunate that he initially gave the impression that he'd go public if McCain did that was a bad move.
As a supporter of his campaign I can see it as a flip flop from his earlier position and rather than saying that he is against it now because he feels the public system is "broken" as he put it, he should have just said that the small donations he is getting from the public is more representative of the support he is getting and it would be silly not to use that advantage in the general, especially with so much at stake. He should own the decision to change is view. He is doing a politician dance right now and that is unfortunate.
Jesse,
why do you keep writing O-Ba-Ma? I don't get it. Seems like a lot of superfluous punctuation and capitalization. Am I missing something?
Is that Adam Green telling us that Obama didn't really make a pledge to use the public financing system? Ha! What we are now listening to is another round of the W.O.R.M. rules being played -- What Obama Really Meant.
Obama regularly says things that he doesn't really mean; the articulate one misspeaks so often that he has enlisted the help of his campaign and his supporters to explain to us how the words that he's said don't actually mean what the rest of us understand them to mean. For example, his recent statement that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel -- seems like a pretty straightforward statement, right? That was before the W.O.R.M. rules kicked into gear, see what he really meant was "obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."
W.O.R.M has been played a lot during the primaries, but I imagine we'll be seeing a slew of new players in the next few months. Adam Green's just getting warmed up.
I believe that McCain's position on net neutrality may be indicated by Chuck Fish, McCain's Technological Advisor, in this ArsTechnica interview from May. Basically, it boils down to that net neutrality is not necessary because antitrust law can be used to cover specific instances.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080527-mccain-and-obama-tech-policy-at-cfp.html
Great job, Adam - was not familiar with you before but am a fan now. You should get a job in radio.
I gave $ to Dean in 2004 - and I give to the DNC.
@Meg - Jesse was probably home-schooled.
Sorry. Chuck Fish is an attorney for the McCain campaign, not a Technological Advisor.
Steve #16 -- you really think it's wise to continue to point out the similarities between Obama and Dubya? Is that a positive comparison to you? I see a whole lot of similarities between the two, but then again, I have great antipathy for them both.
It seems to me that one aspect of a “solution” with regard to Presidential campaigns is that 527 organizations need to be accountable for their advertisements and the information that they put out. I suggest that, in a manner similar to publicly traded companies, the President and Treasurer of the 527 organization must sign some type of document certifying that the information content in the ad is accurate and reliable. If the ad is found to be libelous, fraudulent or in other ways significantly at variance with the known facts (or facts that should be known) then these people should be personally liable – both financially and jail time should be appropriately awarded. Perhaps holding anyone who contributed 10% or more to the 527 might be appropriate too. There needs to be some way of having legal teeth to keep the discussion if not civil at least factually accurate while still allowing various groups to present whatever ideas they might have – they just need to be able to substantiate them. (Perhaps this should be expanded to include all product advertizing.)
Another aspect to the solution is to make all TV and Radio time “free” to national candidates during a specific window – and giving equal time in significant blocks to each candidate to discuss issues – at various times that are accessible to everyone. In some sense "we the people" are supposed to own the airways - lets demand some free time from the people that profit from using our airways.
Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: “It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z”
http://www.votenader.org/
net neutrality argument bogus: simple solution, as those 415-pansies-looking-for-a-cause well know, is not to prevent companies from buying faster speeds -- but setting up minimum guaranteed speeds for all. One idea is to link them w the residential speeds offered in Japan or Korea as a guideline. If a phone service/media/etc. company needs a faster connection, then why on earth would it be prohibited from buying it?
Glenn Reynolds is still around? His fifteen minutes expired about 2003.
And yes, net neutering is a bogus issue.
Afraid I can't afford the $695.00 fee to go to the PDF. I did go about 3 years ago when it was only about $300.00.
Is Brian paying the full fee or does he get the $100.00 discount for non-profits?
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