Friday, 06.20.08
Obama's Campaign Finance Flip-Flop
Photo by Flickr User Squeaky Marmot Under a Creative Commons License
The Amazing Money Machine
June 2008
Joshua Green reports on how Silicon Valley made Barack Obama this year's hottest start-up.
The Question at Hand
9 April 2008
Marc Ambinder blogs on why Obama's public financing quandary really wasn't one at all.
Betting on Private Money
6 February 2007
Should we care that Barack Obama has decided to reject the public financing system in his bid for the presidency, breaking a pledge he made earlier? My sense is that we should not. Rather, we should object to the fact that he continues to pay lip service to a model of campaign finance regulation that restricts speech and corrupts our politics.
In 1968, the late Stewart Mott, an eccentric left-wing multi-millionaire known for championing liberal causes, backed the candidacy of Senator Eugene McCarthy for the Democratic nomination. In doing so, Mott helped transform the Democrats into a more dovish, socially liberal party. He didn't give to McCarthy to secure some economic advantage. Rather, he donated vast sums in service to his ideals. Something similar happened recently in Colorado, where a number of multimillionaires dedicated to the cause of gay rights have helped restore the state's Democratic Party through a coordinated fundraising effort, a story Josh Green told in these pages last year.
One of the many reasons liberals oppose the sharp rise in inequality we've seen over the past three decades is the threat of pro-rich economic activism. The argument goes that the ultrarich can, through their contributions, secure access to elected officials, and these elected officials can then secure rents for their rich benefactors. That's the theory at least. It is certainly true that a regulatory state offers many opportunities for would-be access capitalists, who use their privileged positions to stymie competitors. But that's no less true under our current campaign finance regime, in which the so-called bundlers who have the time and resources to gather contributions from friends and colleagues enjoy outsized influence. A purely public system, in which private contributions are banned - except for self-financed candidates - creates other dangers. First, there's the obvious danger that self-financers will have a powerful advantage, also true under the status quo. Second, it is difficult to devise a public system that won't advantage familiar voices and entrenched political parties.
Barack Obama claims to support public financing of elections. But his campaign has created a model that is in many respects more attractive - a decentralized campaign built on the small dollar contributions of over 1.5 million donors, more donors than have ever before contributed to a presidential campaign. It is a model that relies far less on big dollar bundlers and far more on engaged citizens. To be sure, a disproportionately large share of even small dollar donors is upper-middle-class or even rich; but that's to be expected, as this is the most ideological segment of the population. These small donors have a sense of ownership over the campaign, and that makes them more likely to participate in more thoroughgoing ways - by rallying friends, by knocking on doors, and by closely monitoring the political scene. For enthusiastic democrats, that can't be a bad thing.
One wonders, though: why should the Stewart Motts of the world be denied the opportunity to make their own vast contributions alongside small dollar donors? If George Soros or Michael Bloomberg wrote Obama a check for $500 million, he'd surely continue to build his more sustainable network of small donors. He'd also be able to buy hours of time on primetime network television to share his vision of America's future. Or he could literally put a chicken in every pot, or create a series of Obama-themed daycare centers across the country, winning the support of stressed-out parents everywhere. He could create a parallel to the YMCA - the Young People's Obama Association (YPOA) - that would provide urban youth with an outlet for the athletic and creative energies. Instead of just walking away from the public financing system in this year's election, Obama should seriously consider leaving the whole tangled mess behind and using his brand to build a powerful charitable network that rivals those of the Catholic and Mormon churches. That is the kind of bold, hopeful change we need.
A battle of hypocritesThe Nation's Jack Nichols laments Obama's decision but notes that McCain is no better on the issue. |
No scruplesBen Smith explains that Obama's choice is hardly out of character because the Senator is a pragmatist before being a reformer. |
The lobbyist connectionPatrick Ruffini explains that lobbyst and PAC contributions play a tiny role in campaign fundraising and denounces Obama's arguments to the contrary. |
A typical politicianIn the National Review, Stephen Spruiell argues Obama's feel-good idealism is a front for his opportunism. |
The limits to reformMark Schmitt critiques campaign finance reform but sees potential in small-donor fund-raising and 'netroots' campaigns. |
(21)
I heard a similar complaint recently from a conservative friend: why should Obama be allowed to accept vast sums of money, far greater than the other candidate? Why shouldn't he follow the same rules as McCain, accepting public funds as a base and then a limited amount of contributions from private donors?
Well, for one thing, unlike McCain, Obama is not taking special interest or PAC money. In fact, only individuals (and I guess organized individuals) and contribute to his campaign. For another, no corporations or super-wealthy individual donors can have sway over Obama's campaign by making mega-donations.
Yes, Obama has flip-flopped on his willingness to take public funds. But the result is a candidate whose campaign is financed by willing donors from all social strata (yes, you can even donate a dollar if you like).
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/200840.php
Black Pot Call Home 06.19.08 -- 3:18PM By Josh Marshall
Someone help me here. McCain is grandstanding on public financing when he is, as we speak, breaking the law by continuing to spend unlimited primary campaign money after opting in to public financing for the primary phase of the campaign?
And then greenlighting the outside 527s to go after Obama only days ago?
Something doesn't compute.
One word: Swiftboat
It's funny how you can bang on a system that privileges the rich, and then turn around and suddenly promote the alternative, which also privileges the rich, merely because it's your likeminded rich.
"To be sure, a disproportionately large share of even small dollar donors is upper-middle-class or even rich; but that's to be expected, as this is the most ideological segment of the population."
That's not necessarily a good thing, as building consensus and filtering out the extremism that comes from such ideologically-driven people is what a candidate -- and a president -- will need to be doing.
He or she shouldn't be hog-tied by "the most ideological segment of the population".
"These small donors have a sense of ownership over the campaign, and that makes them more likely to participate in more thoroughgoing ways - by rallying friends, by knocking on doors, and by closely monitoring the political scene. For enthusiastic democrats, that can't be a bad thing."
Those are the people that get the jobs in government then, as we all know, and again, that isn't necessarily a good thing. You seem to imply that if the "right sort" in the "netroots" who believe the politically-correct agenda put in their $2000 and $3000 donations through hive-mind on Facebook or FriendFeed, that this is somehow more pure or authentic than an older-style Democratic bundling donations he got in checks at parties in his home. Why?
It's not like the Internet sanitizes politics or makes it more authentic -- if anything it makes it less accountable.
For all the reasons described in this issue about Silicon Valley's troublesome new ownership of a candidate, we have to be concerned about this kind of "netroots" financing. It means the Valley just narrowly skews politics to its interests, whether for pro-China or "net-neutrality" issues, and beings to impose its cynicism about representative democracy and its hugely flawed and restrictive governance and speech policies drawn from the TOS of all the corporate owned blogs, websites, social media platforms, and virtual worlds.
Obama is not taking special interest or PAC money
What would you call moveon.org? It's a PAC like any other PAC.
What is this fake belief in the vast "diversity" of Obama's campaign financing, when it is abundantly clear from the investigations of this very magazine that it is leftist social movements in the US and Silicon Valley.
moveon.org
Thanks for bringing that up. Yes, it's a PAC. But, please, don't stop the analysis there. What is this particular PAC's source of money?
It comes in the form of small donations from a very large number of people. Not the same kind of PAC as the ones that receive amounts in the thousands from very few donors.
leftist social movements in the US and Silicon Valley.
I didn't know Silicon Valley was a separate nation!
Write the cheque then, it's only dollars to spend as needed/described. That's absolutely Bound to Generate Interest and Currency Flow/Wealth Transfer to Novel Donors and Innovative IntelAIgent Design Programmers.
Virtualisation PathFinders Search and Rescue would XXXXPect no less a Bold Move/Statement/Quantum Leap.
So we can expect a Salaam post on McCain's campaign finance hypocrisy coming soon, right? I mean, if he actually believes in this stuff on principle and not as a political cudgel.
this is the same breathtakingly poor analysis the supreme court relied on in equating speech with money. more importantly, it is beside the point.
the point is: obama's flip-flop on public financing shows that he is a typical politician. he is not the agent of change we thought he was.
if he won't be an agent of change, at least he can fall back on his "record" as a "community organizer" who "helped folks." i think putin and i'm-a-dinner-jacket will be impressed.
Where is the evidence that Obama flip-flopped? Links please!! What about McCain breaking the law? Or are you going to ignore that?
Reihan Salam: You are kidding, right? So you'd prefer a candidate to be beholden to a few rich people? Are you serious? Because that is what you would get with most rich people. They aren't going to give millions to a campaign and get nothing in return.
Re: It comes in the form of small donations from a very large number of people. Not the same kind of PAC as the ones that receive amounts in the thousands from very few donors.
Miguel, there's little difference between the "hive mind" and "crowdsourced" swarm that a few influencers gin up using new media like Facebook, Twitter, Facebook, and those few influencers that gathered people in their living room. Let's say friends of Hilary have a women's breakfast in Manhattan, and get 50 of them to take out their checkbooks for $10,000 each. And let's say everybody on Roberts Scoble's Twitter list of 20,000 raptly listening to his every opinion on tech is told Obama's the one to vote for and each donates $25 each.
Why is one more "democratic" than the other? Sheer numbers don't make democracy, and sheer dollars don't, either. The people who spend $10,000 in the Hilary list represents families, corporations, pillars of society that give to a lot of things that make the public weal -- libraries, hospitals, charities. Everyone benefits from their wealth. The 20,000 kids in mom's basement or IT guys in giant corporations like Microsoft or Google who pay $25 care mainly about a fixed set of issues -- keeping or getting jobs, net neutrality, Chinese market -- whatever.
Those "very large number of people" giving money to moveon.org represent a leftist constituency. They aren't blessed with somehow superior "democracy-ness" just because they are networked and put in a database, and some of them may actually have very different opinions about lots of different issues but merely vote for Obama to stop the war in Iraq, let's say.
Yes, Silicon Valley is a separate nation. Haven't you noticed? They've had a good year. Everybody else is in a recession.
Just because there are a lot of smaller donations doesn't make them more authentic or independent -- they are people swarmed into position with Internet memes and facile blogs. Have you ever studied how the hundreds of political blogs work? They all echo and repeat and link to each other, it's really only a few that take the lead and swarm the others.
Obama's funds-raising machine IS public financing, while the pathetic and ill-supported-by-the-public government program is not. The current program puts financing into the hands of government, whereas Obama's model puts it in the hands of the people.
He's taking on a tremendous responsibility, even greater than the duties of President. Because if he disillusions the people who've financed him, the resulting cynicism may very well mark the end of any meaningful democracy here.
There are alternatives. The Chinese model, actually and despite the Marxian patina, is actually a national socialist format.
That's likely to be our future, too, if this fails.
these posts are all beside the point. he went back on his first and most solemn promise. yes, mccain has shifted stances on some key issues as well, but obama's whole appeal is that he is different-- people certainly aren't supporting him because of his experience. with this flip-flop, he has proven himself to be nothing more than a cult of personality.
i can't believe i'm saying this, but i almost miss hillary. at least she was upfront about being an opportunist.
Flip-flopping is lazy language. We've also heard the term waffling from the right in the past.
Both terms imply that it is better to "stay the course" than to reevaluate things in light of new information and circumstances, and adjust accordingly.
As we've seen in Iraq, staying the course isn't always the best plan of action. Obama realized that McCain was going to get a lot more money from PACs, from the RNC (which has much greater coffers than the DNC), and from unauthorized smear campaigns from 527s.
The only rational course of action is to track back and reconsider options in favor of a plan of attack that will win the election. Anything else would be political suicide.
Everyone knows (including McCain) that the campaign finance system is totally broken. The agreement they struck but never formalized would have put McCain at a distinct and unfair advantage.
By the way, speaking of flip-flopping, what about McCain's views on abortion, illegal immigration, gay marriage/civil unions, the separation of church and state, privacy, and anti-torture protection for POWs.
Oh, wait, we're only going to hear about flip-flopping in issues like campaign finance, not the ones where policy is concerned. Tee hee.
Re: Obama's funds-raising machine IS public financing, while the pathetic and ill-supported-by-the-public government program is not. The current program puts financing into the hands of government, whereas Obama's model puts it in the hands of the people
denis, you act as if putting financing under government control somehow is unrelated to "the people". But "the people" are the ones making the donations under the public financing scheme. They may not be people you like, you may not feel any political affinity with them, even if they are in the same party as you, but they are "the people" too.
Furthermore, in a government-run program, there is accountability. Public financing means government scrutiny. That's not trivial! That's why people like Obama and Lessig were pushing for it back in the day!
You seem to think that the government is some kind of monolithic unassailable tower. Yet, it's an elected government. It also has officials in it that form a professional corps of civil and foreign service that runs government regardless of the party in power. There are many Clintonites in the wilderness in some of these agencies who think no differently than you do and actually perfectly fine programs in certain bailiwicks and are perfectly positioned to run even better programs if the basic rule of law is re-established.
Meanwhile, non-public financing of 8 million Facebookers isn't accountable or viewable by anybody except maybe Mark Zuckerberg. I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing why there's something automagically conferred on these millions of geeks ponying up $25 or $2000 online instead of thousands ponying up $20,000 offline. They are no more public, and no more accountable -- in fact they are less accountable because:
o they are not public figures engaged in public charity and support of causes that we can all see tangibly offline o their views are opaque -- they are not in registered parties with known political platforms responsible to their constituencies -- there are just as many Ron Paul supporters who flipped over to Obama as anything else, and that should make you worry o they are not reporting to some agency that could then make public the names of the largest contributors or their positions o in fact, the influencers of social media who bundle the $25 or $2000 contributions, the Dave Winers and Robert Scobles and Steve Gillmors of Silicon Valley whom most people have never heard of, are public figures without public accountability -- that's what I find scary. They are merely crowdsourcerers, Twitterers, networkers with amorphous masses of people that may or may not have a coherent plan for when they all swarm into power, or may merely be whipsawed by a few with a hidden agenda.
I'm interested to see this constant invocation of the work "broken". "Broken" is tech jargon which techs always use for things they don't like. If they don't like a "walled-garden" social media, for example, or they don't like the existing copyright protection regime of 100 years, they will declare it "broken". "Broken" is a very ideological word on their lips -- what they mean is that they don't want to use it.
I've yet to hear a really unbiased and persuasive analysis by a skilled journalist about what is ostensibly "broken" about this system. I don't see that it obviously is broken. An argument in favour of the system would say that in fact, if candidates were compelled to use the public financing system, there's be less liklihood that money would decide politics -- and again, whether a million affluent geeks in Silicon Valley on Facebook using money to affect politics or a thousand socialites in Manhattan who are friends of Hilary using money to affect politics -- it amounts to the same thing, in which many, many constituencies and issues are simply left out and disenfranchised.
On the other hand, public financing seems like a restriction on free speech. Why is it ok to have moveon.org be a PAC, that sanctifies itself with little donations, but all ideological clones answering to a few influencers in top-traffic blogs, but it's not ok to have, oh, AIPAC, with long-term organizations that are answerable to their members with visible platforms and articles?
Netroots are not grassroots.
Prokofy Neva:
The sparseness of what "the public" "donates" via their tax forms vs. the massive nature of Obama's revolutionary democratic up-swelling put to rest any question of which method really represents "public financing.'
Government accountability? You must be kidding. Our "government is a K-Street creature, financed -- both parties -- by the money boys who can nullify the will of the people with contemptuous ease.
I call that "broken."
The McCain-Feingold campaign reform steps all over free speech and is useless. The rich boys are entitled to give money and place ads, that's America. And we all know how easy it is for the fat cats and special interests to get their money into play anyway.
But now that the people have found a way to outspend them, watch out.
denis, you're ducking my question about public scrutiny -- a public agency that can monitor these funds is better than unaccountable monies flowing into unaccountable coffers.
What is the means by which the Facebook millions are going to be accounted for?
Just because these government agencies don't work with the level of scrutiny we'd all like now doesn't mean we overthrow public institutions in favour of some whipsawing social media wave. Please.
I fail to see why 8 million people rustled up by Silicon Valley represent democratic authenticity. They don't. They merely represent one interest group among many. And if you don't wish to hear it from me, you'll hear it closer to the elections when the people who aren't on the Facebooks and Twitters and whatnot make their will known in other ways -- or -- worse for you -- get on the Facebooks and Twitters and use those tools in the other direction -- that is if the devs and coders and early adapters and Obama claques don't get them banned -- one of the most obvious problems with these wonderful "democratic" tools.
When public institutions don't do what you want that isn't "broken" -- that's just not doing what you want. If they don't do this with as much success or accountability as we would like, that isn't being broken either. What I would call "broken" is the idea that you can take an Internet-spawned "up-swelling" and call it "democracy" when what you should be calling it is "lobbying" -- it's inciting and harvesting of people who could as likely vote for Ron Paul as Obama in many cases if they were just influenced the other way by the right memes.
There's nothing wrong with lobbying. Don't pretend that one lobby makes a democracy and becomes more authentic for being spawned on the Internet -- it doesn't.
The rich boys in Silicon Valley paid for Obama's ads, and are still paying. It's just that you find these rich boys more cool, or there are more of them, that pay $2000 and not $20,000. That makes them a constituency. It doesn't make them constitute all of democracy, and grant them legitimacy in overthrowing institutions.
Reihan, "Instead of just walking away from the public financing system in this year's election, Obama should seriously consider leaving the whole tangled mess behind and using his brand to build a powerful charitable network that rivals those of the Catholic and Mormon churches."
I would like to know why this is a necessary and even admirable goal? To compete against these churches? A social services organization founded on contemporary liberal social thought and evangelical atheism?
"All men are created equal." One person, one vote. Democracy.
Heavier reliance on small donations flattens the field out. That's enough of a reason for me. A few people giving thousands, millions, to a candidate is disproportionate.
That's not to say one can't give millions to the NGO of their choice. More power to them.
Posted by Miguel Marcos | June 20, 2008 4:40 PM