(I don’t think the management will agree with this post, but here goes anyway.)
Crossroads GPS, the Super PAC backed by Republican operative Karl Rove, announced Wednesday that it has launched a $25 million ad campaign over the next month — representing the same amount the Obama campaign has pledged to spend in May….
Crossroads has been able to vastly out-raise and out-spend its Democratic counterpart, Priorities USA, which launched a $4 million buy just yesterday….
Last week, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters that the campaign planned to spend $25 million on television ads in May.
Barack Obama may have the mojo — and I stress may — to withstand the fecal tsunami of GOP super PAC attack ads this year. But four years from now — unless the Democrats have become vastly more friendly to the interests of billionaires than they already are — how is the first Democratic non-incumbent to run in a Citizens United world possibly going to compete with right-wing billionaire cash? How is anyone with even vaguely progressive ideas on economic issues ever going to compete?
You can talk to me all you want about the so-called emerging Democratic majority; I’m telling you that, if Citizens United isn’t reversed or curtailed, or (perhaps) hackers develop a little political savvy and make it impossible for super PACs to keep their donor lists secret, there will never be another Democratic president after Barack Obama. We will have only a far right in our electoral politics.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Yep.
I disagree only with the categorical way you present the argument. Your overall point is correct. The ruling makes the playing field massively lop-sided.
Back to the Rove/Norquist dream of a permanent Republican majority? The reality after a few years of Republican dominance always seems to interfere with their vision. Not that the opposition since 1964 has seriously challenged the dreadful public and economic policies of Republicans. Or figured out how a dumbskull like GWB managed to be competitive with Gore. (GWB lost and if not for all the election fraud in FL and the judicial frauds on the Supreme Court, the world would have known that he lost.)
The less well-funded tea-bagger Republicans that are winning primaries is another fly-in-ointment of the Rove’s dream as there simply isn’t enough money available to elect the likes of “I’m not a witch O’Donnell” against any halfway creditable Democrat.
That’s the sort of thing I’m thinking. There may, just may, be factors other than campaign financing that affect elections, though you wouldn’t know it from reading the doom-n-gloomer liberal bloggers.
seriously. oh, did you hear that the president didn’t support gay marriage the right way? and his timing was off. Oh, and he didn’t use the right words. Oh, and also everything sucks, we’re doomed.
I need a fucking drink. Conservative wingnuts to the right of me, crybabies to the left.
Totally agree on the gay marriage reaction. but it seems to me the “never enough” meme is all we’ve been hearing from you re Obama for years. I would have expected you to joint petulant chorus. What changed?
I ended up doing a (ignored) diary over at Kos re an incredibly clueless reaction to Obama’s announcement on the Smiley & West radio show. Now that the topic has come up, maybe I’ll post it here too.
I’m not going to deny I’m unhappy with Obama. And it’s NOT a case of “never enough”. My objections are as specific and passionate as my praise. I STRONGLY believe in giving credit when it’s due: frankly, I wish I had more opportunity to give credit. For example, although I remain critical of the inadequate, flaccid health care reforms, I have never hesitated to praise those components that have made a difference in people’s lives. The end of pre-existing conditions is FANTASTIC. I hope Obama gets re-elected so the rest of the goodies kick in, and i truly believe that the medical loss ratio really DOES spell the end of the health insurance “industry” as we know it. Hallelujah.
That said, fuck the NDAA he signed. And fuck the “i can kill anyone I want, whenever i want” shit. And fuck his betrayal on FISA and immunity for telecoms. Fuck Tim Geithner and fuck those no-strings bailouts and fuck those grand bargains on social security/medicare.
I try my damnedest to be tough but fair, and if that makes me unpopular2with cetain people, they6v can suck a bag of dicks.
Okay — but you might want to consider laying off on the “crybabies to the left.” It’s the Democratic partisans that are willing to cave to the GOP that do the crying and not those on the left. Had Mr. Obama paid any attention to the left when he was elected, he would be in a much stronger position today. Lucky for him, he’s once again drawn a truly awful opponent. One that’s naturally out-of-touch and stands for nothing but lower taxes for rich people. Those two are gold in election campaigns. Plus Willard has a thinner public office resume than Palin and is thinner skinned as well. The cherry on top is his patriarchal religion that’s also a bit weird.
Do you think that continuously fretting and publicly displaying your insecurity and fear that a fuckwad like Willard could win helps Obama?
It’s Democrats/liberals like you that are willing to accept anything, even a rightwing health insurance law, as long as Republican pols vote against it and and Democratic pols support it that are as much an enemy of “the people” as Republicans. The Greeks are learning this really fast of late. Then again they have more than one political party.
Marie:
I don’t know you, and your username is kinda new to me, so i will be generous when I say this:
You don’t know SHIT about my beliefs, my sense of strategy, or my background at this site, so step off.
I am not a fan of the way health reform was pitched, designed, lied about (including by the president), or written into law. I am not ignorant of the democrats’ flaws, or the horrors of the corrupt duopoly.
I’m also not historically illiterate.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/deb-fischer-wins-nebraska-primary-8893769
This seems relevant. It would stand to reason that the moneymen will only get better and better at selling their chosen candidates.
On the other hand, it does seem like there’s still room for certain Democrats to be able to barrel to the right on fiscal policy without compromising their ability to raise money (and preserve legitimacy) with the lower classes. Obama raises $40-50 million/month already, mostly because his “movement” is structured as a cult of personality or even a redemptive religion. He racks up a lot of little checks from little old black ladies who are unlikely to bail on him if he were to promise to Wall Street not to raise taxes on capital gains. He’s not gonna do it, but he certainly could. It’s not hard to envision Hillary trying to pull off some sort of Million Mom Army on her way to becoming another “First” as President in 2016, playing both sides of the spectrum all the way.
I imagine we’ll see two different Gilded parties, one limousine liberal and the other reactionary. Both will have their faux populisms that they use to placate the masses. Actual populism will get drowned under all that money.
She pulled of the classic jujitsu of letting your opponents blow each other to pieces and stand there as the sane alternative. It only works in three-way races, and only if you time everything just right. It was a masterful campaign on her part. I should figure out who ran it and keep an eye out for them in the future.
There’s little reason to expect that primaries will ever go largely uncontested again now that single financiers can keep a candidate afloat.
The Establishment has its work cut out for it.
Best congress money can buy.
It’s a shame that comments can’t be edited, but to clarify what I was saying, I don’t think either party is on death’s doorstop. I think the failure of things like Americans Elect demonstrate that there is no burgeoning replacement party/movement to replace either D or R. I expect both parties to trade office for a good while longer.
I do think the money demands will lead to Dem leadership transitioning to become less a “Party of the People” and more a Party of Manhattan, Tech, Gays, and Hollywood. Which is what it’s accused of being by the right anyway already.
It’s basically a vast and dangerous experiment in deregulation. I don’t think corporate money is omnipotent when it comes to voting. I have to believe there is a point of diminishing returns which we are already close to. But there is plenty of money to buy both parties.
In that history will mark the appointment in the face of losses of both the electoral and popular vote of a dynastic AWOL frat-boy with limited education, no experience and questionable sexuality by an ideologically stacked activist court to the highest office in the land as the End of “America”, Obama will be the last democratically elected president.
What the hell does “questionable sexuality” mean? I’m no fan of Dubya, but this seems like a gratuitous cheap shot, at best, given the man’s well-documented crimes.
What is the definition of an American Corp? Does a corporation that does 10% of its business here and 90% in china still have unlimited secret free speech dollars?
If the plutocracy pulls this off, there will be no need for a president chosen by anyone but themselves. It won’t take long to move to replacing the entire office with a Dear CEO whose divine wisdom and divine right finally protects us from commies, terrorists, and disrespectors of ignorance. Our last slim hope at that point will be a civil war.
Slim indeed. The technology imbalance almost guarantees the elites would win such a war.
Agreed. But there were pretty big gaps in Egypt, Tunisia, et al. I think the bigger issue is whether Americans really give a damn. Residents of at least 2/3 of our geographic area might well end up fighting for those nice Koch boys and Dear CEO Rove.
I mean, that nice Ryan Sandberg gives us the free cable with all those exciting shows about killing commies, malcontents, and other subversives who keep trying to ruin our way of life.
Your last sentence is very true, though I tend to see that as a product of elite technological advantage. They have the money to spend on the fancy studies, fancy toys and fancy media that you need to manipulate human psychology.
jesus fucking christ.
This post may be the textbook example of why I don’t read that many blogs anymore. “boohoohoo, we’re doomed, DOOMED!” And I say this as someone who’s firmly in the “we’re doomed” camp.
it gets so old, whether it’s digby, greenwald, americablog, fdl, or the gloomiest of the kossacks. Never mind that Citizens is being revisited, that it’s being challenged in other states, or that people are fighting back from the grassroots. Nope, it’s ALL OVER and we will NEVER EVER have another democratic president. Booman likes to say that I spend my time “living in an alternative universe of permanent outrage and relentless negativity fostered and fueled by the blogosphere.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’ll tell you one thing: the diary is weak, namby-pamby crybaby shit.
What was it Elizabeth Warren said about pulling up your big girl pants?
Yeah, all those climate change crybabies, namby-pamby whiners pointing out that the political system does not work and will not see real reform without revolutionary change that’s nowhere in sight, and that the economy has been taken over by plutocrats as evil, if more PR savvy, as anything in the Middle East? None of the above is anything that isn’t your stock in trade on this blog.
Pissed that somebody’s on your turf? Better pull up your big girl pants.
Seriously, very strange post from you. Suddenly we can assume that the corrupt Court will turn on its owners? Why? What do we do to make the grassroots resistance something more than yet another humiliating defeat? The Dem Party won’t even send a few $million to WI. You got some magic recipe to turn it all around?
I don’t like pointless doomy whining any more than you do, but somebody has to at least try to challenge the “nothing going on here” puppet show. And it beats the trembly liberals trying to do little fixes around the edges as long as they don’t make anybody not like them. So instead of a content-free rant, why don’t you share your vision of how the American republic has a future? I sure could use one right about now.
Heh.
You guys should have been around in ’72.
Talk about doom.
“You got some magic recipe to turn it all around?”
No, and neither does the diarist. It’s just a waaaah-fest.
as for “my turf”, drop by my blog, bitch. Tell me the last time I wrote anything, beyond my recent obit for MCA.
You know why i stopped blogging? Because I got tired of being a fucking doom and gloom crybaby, and linking to other gloom and doom crybabies. And as a result, I’ve come to expect more than doom and gloom. Everyone does gloom and doom. It’s old. Gimme something substantive. “boo hoo hoo” doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
And in typical blog commenter fashion, you want nothing but negative. If I was pushing the gloom and doom line, you’d be telling me to stop being so negative. Grow a testicle.
Holy shit, we’re doomed:
…and so on about how some stupid legislation didn’t make it past judicial review. BUT OH GODS WE’RE DOOMED.
I’m not making light of the very real problems we have. I mean, for pete’s sake the US is going to be deploying drones domestically, there’s a war on voting rights, and all the other shit. For that matter, my lady and I have been unemployed for nearly a year, while trying to open an elitist brewing business. Shit sucks all over.
but you know, the McCarthy era ended too. And so did the Gilded Age. And so did the Great Depression. And Jim Crow and legal segregation.
THAT is what i object to. What Booman called “categorical”. Sorry for being grumpy about it, DaveW. I don’t read this blog for gloom and doom.
I’m sure Steve has a thick skin, which we all need as bloggers. But I was half-wondering if your account had been hacked.
I’m a big fan of Bluto’s speech in Animal House (“this could be the best night of our lives, but you’re gonna let it be the worst.”)
And, the best night spread out to be the best day of their lives as they destroyed the graduation parade.
Ot, as they say in the movie Mallrats, “Bickety Bam, and they danced on the ruins of the stupid stage.”
No matter what, you can always fight on, you can always do the smartest thing (or a really futile and stupid gesture), until you’re dead.
So, I’m doing my part to overturn Citizen United. I’m doing what I can to make sure Romney doesn’t win and the GOP isn’t rewarded for their evil behavior.
My motto?
Like that.
Forward.
you and i have had substantial disagreements over the past few years.
that said,
yes. And bazooka joe can rim me.
Relax, have a cream soda.
Relax, have a sandwich, drink a glass of milk, do some fucking thing.
It’s a good response.
We’re doomed either way, so how do you want to go out?
Are you off your meds or something?
for you, blowzooka joe:
Basic premises first:
One being Obama is much of a democratic president.
Second, related premise is that we have much of a democratic party now.
One bit of proof is health insurance reform (it really can’t be called health care reform). With a “democratic” POTUS and democrat control of both the house and the senate, the democrats couldn’t get a single payer or a public option plan passed.
Beengo! Here we see a perfect example of the large problem with “progressives” in Bloggo world.
1.) You admit the “Democrats” are already serving the oilgarchy- just as the repugs do.
2.) You imply in order to WIN, Democrats should be “vastly more friendly” to the interests of the oligarchy- perhaps even more so than the repugs?
3.) You say nothing about what democratic voters want- do they want the “Democrats” to kiss wealthy class ass even more? Uhhh, doubtful.
Thus ALL of the air is let out of the lead balloon promulgated continually in progressive Bloggo world- i.e. We the voters are winning something by the Democratic party becoming more and more like the repug party, simply in the interest of winning elections.
All of the above profoundly proves Ralph Nader correct: “We have a one corporate party system”.
^That he spread shit on to make grow.
But regardless, it’s not something that can be changed.