Political grabbag

[tagryn]

I think Obama is going to win on Tuesday. Not only does he have strong leads in both the polls and the electoral projections, but almost as (perhaps more) important is his lead in political contributions. There was a nice article I ran across a while back that I've since lost which laid out how since Carter, every Presidential winner has also won in total money raised. For this year, Obama has raised $639 million compared to McCain's $360 million. In 2004, Bush outmonied Kerry $367M to $328M, and in 2000 Bush outgained Gore $94M to $49M(although the metrics for 2000 are from a difference source). Also check these historical stats for Congress: consistently, the winner has outspent the loser on average. A disturbing graph to me is how the total money being poured into the campaigns has exploded since 1996, and the trend continued this year. Is having both campaigns so awash in cash ultimately a good thing for the process?

Republicans have been trying to portray Obama as "another Jimmy Carter." No, doesn't work. I think a closer analogy, insofar as any analogy can hold, is to Woodrow Wilson. Both academics, both anti-war (at least at first), both internationalists; Wilson's crowning achievement was the creation of the League of Nations.

WSJ: "Democrats Vie to Shape an Obama Legislative Agenda." Analysis of the three main factions within the Democratic party.

Philly Inquirer: "The American Debate: Democratic era coming? Possibly not." Some of the pundits predicting a coming decades-long Democratic dominance also should recall that less than 4 years ago, the GOP hardliners were thinking the same thing about their chances. Things switch around so much that it'd be very hard to maintain the discipline needed to prevent at least one side of the party from overreaching, which then gives the opposition energy and a cause to rally around.

Townhall.com: "Getting the Elephant Back on its Feet": a prescription for getting the GOP back on the road to recovery. I think he's right about the GOP's corruption and big spending being the real daggers to their heart, and the thing that needs to be corrected first. Even if you're anti-Republican, having one party get too strong without the other providing checks and oversight isn't a good thing IMHO; we saw what happened under Bush when the Congress basically rubber-stamped almost everything, and vice-versa.

Finally, to combat the meme that's likely to evolve by 2012 that "Obama ran a pristine campaign, and the GOP did all the misreprentations!" here and here and here are summaries of some the more audacious distortions from this campaign, and there's been mud enough from both sides that neither can claim they took the high road, no matter how much the candidates personally may have wanted to. This is not to say the GOP hasn't been more misleading - since McC/P were trailing most of the campaign, they were also attacking more, so it isn't surprising they were sketchier with the facts (see Factcheck.org and Politifact.org). However, Obama was willing to go along with the distortions by his side, as well. The great demise of negative campaigning, this wasn't.

Comments

[erikred.livejournal.com]

As concerns the money in campaigns, you may want to compare with Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner; they make an interesting point that it's hard to say if a candidate wins because he/she raises more money, or if a candidate raises more money because he/she appears to be winning.

[tagryn]

I think a somewhat effective counter to worries about $$$ in campaigns is, hey, the guy/gal is raising money because he/she is popular, so what's wrong with that? But along with that is that the really big donations come from corporations and individuals giving because of what they think the candidate can do for them once they're in office, which leads to a corrupting pay-to-play model, as well as cementing incumbents in office since they're already in position to give favors compared to challengers. That's how I see it.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

I think we need to look at the stages at which big money is donated by those corporations to determine the level of expected culpability. At an early stage, big boosts are almost certainly the kind that expect quid pro quo relationships; at later stages, big donations may be an attempt simply to avoid being on a candidate's bad side. While I would certainly be much more comfortable with $MY_GUY refusing campaign contributions from $THOSE_GUYS, I can hardly fault him for taking their money at a stage when everyone seems to be covering their bases.