Archives for 2003

I have stated several times that I am against the recall in California, and to date, I have seen no reason why I would vote for recall were I a Californian. I despise Davis, I think he is a hideous person and a worse governor, but people KNEW what they were getting when they voted for him. Unless you want to have state governments that resemble the government of Italy, changing every six months, I can’t see why recall is a good idea (and I do not see this as a far-right conspiracy- I don’t know of ANYONE who likes Davis). Elected governor’s should serve until they are convicted of a crime or resign.

Having said that I don’t think this is a far-right conspiracy, I must admit that some part of me does not want the CA GOP to get another chance. They chose to nominate the wholly unelectable Bill Simon, clearly ignoring the obvious opinions of the VAST majority of the people, and anyone with judgement that bad may not be fit to govern. Sure, they stood on principle, but if I am walking in the crosswalk and refuse to jump out of the way of a drunk driver, I may have stood on principle, but the result is going to be ugly. In other words, the CA GOP deserves this.

As much as I would like a liberal Republican in the CA governor’s office (Kos and Yglesias are right- Arnold as governor will not put CA in play for Bush, but a moderate face such as Arnold an be nothing but good for the GOP), I think I would vote against recall, and just in case it succeeds, I would vote for Cruz Bustamante. He is after all, the ELECTED Lt. Gov (and from what I can tell, he and Davis seem to hate each other). He was chosen for a reason- to fulfill the obligations of the office of Governor should Gray Davis not be capable of dispensing his duties.

Of course, I don’t have to live there- as an outside, it is rather easy for me to pompously stand on principle.

CA RecallPost + Comments (7)

Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy post about how Democrats are really not hurting for cash the way they claim to be. Matt Stinson has gone the extra mile and made up a fancy graph of their Big Money Donations:

When it comes to the big donors, Democrats remain king of the hill — just as they have been for the past 12 years. To illustrate this point, I put together the following chart based on OpenSecrets.org’s database of top donors:

Admittedly, some of this data is bound to change in the 2004 cycle thanks to McCain-Feingold — a fact that has Democrats whining about Bush’s small donor advantage — but that only means that Democrats will become increasingly reliant on in-kind donations from liberal special interest groups, like the $75 million “defeat Bush fund” announced yesterday.

This is not a party as desperate for cash as they want you to think.

More on Democrats and MoneyPost + Comments (31)

Rarely a day goes by without some liberal breathlessly blurting out how evil Bush is, and that the only way they can beat him is to fight back and take the message to the people since they have no way to raise the money that the evil Republicans are showering on him. Let’s just take a quick peek at some of the rhetoric regarding Bush and money:

Bush’s money machine–as we went to press he was on track to garner more in a few weeks than all nine Democratic candidates raised in the first three months of the year–is a measure of his popularity only among people who can afford to write $1,000 or $2,000 checks. That group is less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the population, and far wealthier, whiter, older and more likely to be male than the general population.

– From the Nation, re-posted on PublicCampaign.org

If money is the mother’s milk of politics, as one Republican fund-raiser puts it, then George W. Bush is swimming in it, thanks to a small army of “Rangers” rounding up cash for the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.

– ABC News, 3 July 2003

“President Bush has just passed the largest tax cut for the wealthy in history, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that he will now turn to those same people and raise record amounts of money from them. The tax bill is turning out to be quite a pay-day for the Bush Administration, as the millions saved by the super rich will go directly out of their pockets and into the pockets of the GOP.”

– Terry McAuliffe on the DNC Website

The beauty of it is that fundraising for Mr Bush is now virtually effortless: his presidential presence is sufficient to draw in donations. All his Republican supporters have to do is riffle through their rollerdexes in search of more phone numbers. “No one is turning down any calls or saying ‘I don’t want to contribute’,” said one of Mr Bush’s most active fund-raisers.

By contrast, raising money for Mr Bush’s Democratic candidates is hard graft. “The fundamental difference is that Bush himself spends no time on it,” Steve Elmendorf, a senior aide to Democratic hopeful Dick Gephardt who spends eight hours a day seeking contributions, told the New York Times. “He gets on a plane, shows up for 15 minutes, and leaves. And each of these [Democratic] candidates spends volumes of time on the phone asking for money.”

– Money no object as the Bush fundraising juggernaut sets off, UK Guardian, 16 June 2003

The Bush/Money meme is not limited to the professionals:

It might be infuriating, but it’s reality. Bush can raise money like no one else. Ever…

This is no surprise to any of us. The GOP will outspend the Democratic Party, by at least 2-1, maybe 3-1.

The GOP needs all that money. They know darn well they couldn’t compete with Democrats on a fair playing field. Our message beats their message any day of the week. So they are the New York Yankees of the political world — heaping piles of cash in order to win, and succeeding a great deal of the time.

The Dean campaign has shown the power of the Netroots to raise money. Having people like you and me fund a candidacy like Dean’s frees it from whoring itself to corporate interests. The results are intoxicating. And whether you love or hate Dean, you have to admit that this (the fundraising model, that is) is a future for the Democratic Party around which we can all rally.

– Bush’s fundraising “effortless,” the Daily Kos, 1 July 2003

Compare and contrast: last week we received the details of how the Republicans have worked the room along Washington’s lobbyist haven, K-Street to ensure that their party has friends in high corporate places. On the other hand, over 21,000 individuals contributed to the Dean campaign, doing their part in the David and Goliath battle we will see next year no matter who the Democratic candidate is. What could say more about the ideologies of the two American parties where one outwardly whores for corporate cash while the other appeals to the people who make up this democracy?

– Triumph of The Deananites, Oliver Willis, 30 June 2003

The individual numbers look awfully bad when you compare them to George Bush’s easy fundraising romps recently, but the Democratic total for the quarter is a fairly healthy $30 million. There’s no question that Bush and the Republican are going to outspend the Democrats by a lot, but even so, $30 million 16 months before the election isn’t bad.

– Democratic Fundraising, Kevin Drum, 3 July 2003

You get the point- I could go on all day cutting and pasting in similar quotations, but that would be boring. As I have noted before, there is a noticeable difference in the rhetoric when it pertains to Bush (and Republicans) than when it is dealing with the Democrats. When Bush raises cash, completely within the law, it is a sign that he is evil, and that he has been paid off by the rich. When the Democrats raise money, it is proof of their viability as a candidate, as this quote demonstrates:

Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor making his first bid for national office, raised substantially more money this quarter than all his more established opponents in the Democratic presidential contest, according to figures released today.

The result forced Dr. Dean’s rivals to reconsider how to deal with an opponent they had until now viewed as little more than an irritant.

Republicans raising money- evil corporate hacks set on ruining the earth. Democrats raising money – proof of a candidates vitality. Interesting.

At any rate, the whole party of the rich nonsense has been explored in detail before, and even the NY Times can’t hide it:

The public may be surprised to learn these results, but Democratic Party leaders are not. In getting behind the badly needed drive to end soft money as a device for buying candidates and favors, the Democrats knew they would have considerable catching up to do to broaden their base for the new campaign world of limited hard money. The one category the Democrats led in was among fat-cat donors, with the party garnering 92 percent of the contributions of $1 million or more in 2002, the last year soft money was permitted. No wonder Terry McAuliffe, the Democrats’ soft-money maestro, is emphasizing an urgent new direct-mail effort to enlist many more smaller donors.

Why are the Democrats in so much fund-raising trouble? The truth is they are not. According to the New York Times, the Democrats have raised 50+ million to date for their 9 candidates, while Bush has raised 34 million.. Once the Democrats unite, it is absurd to think that they will not have the unity to raise sufficient funds to adequately finance a campaign for their respective candidate. Not to mention, if there is any real damage to the DNC, it is self-inflicted- years of reliance on the now banned soft money has hurt their fund raising ability. The party of the people was bypassing the people, and taking too much money in soft donations- because it was easy. Cry me a river.

You might think that soft money donations are dead because of provisions in the clearly unconstitutional McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill- but, alas, you are forgetting who we are dealing with on this issue. Remember, Democrats pass rules, other people are supposed to follow them. They have already worked quickly to find ways around the bill they demagogued for so long:

Democrats are kicking off a backdoor way of financing their 2004 congressional campaigns today with the very type of unlimited donations from corporations, unions, and individuals that many party leaders had vowed to flush from the political system.

The strategy involves setting up two new groups unmistakably aligned with the Democratic Party’s longstanding campaign organizations for the House and Senate. Technically, the two groups are not arms of the Democratic Party, a key distinction, because the nation’s new campaign finance law bars lawmakers from soliciting ”soft money,” the unlimited money that politicians still crave.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and minority whip Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, will headline a fund-raising event tonight at the Hotel George for a new group called the New House PAC.

Tonight, the group will raise ”hard money,” a limited, regulated type of donation that lawmakers can legally solicit. But the group plans to ask donors for soft money later this year and to serve as a sort of shadow campaign committee for the Democratic Party, according to sources familiar with the effort.

– Democrats Initiate New ‘Soft Money’ Campaign, Washington Post, 7 May 2003

But the real reason we shouldn’t worry for an immediate decline of the Democrats is their unofficial help. There are more than a few ‘non-partisan’ groups who will toe the DNC line and spend every effort and every political dollar attacking the Bush administration. You may have heard of a few of them: the AFL-CIO, the NEA (who, we should note has had numerous suits filed against it for their clearly partisan use of funds), AFSCME, the Teamsters, the Sierra Club, NARAL, NOW, and many many others. In fact, go look at Open Secrets list of Big Money donors. You will notice a certain party dominates the top, and calling these groups non-partisan is to commit a gross crime against the English language.

Before I move on, let me remind you of my favorite nonpartisan group- the NAACP. Here is a nice, non-partisan statement from Julian Bond:

Republicans appeal “to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality,” NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said yesterday at the civil rights group’s 94th annual convention.

“They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division … their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon,” Mr. Bond said during his welcoming remarks. “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side.”

– Julian Bond sees GOP with ‘dark underside’, Washington Times, 14 July 2003

When not comparing the GOP to the Confederacy or making references to the Taliban, the NAACP has written, financed, and aired such charming ‘non-partisan’ commercials such as the following doozy equating President Bush’s (then Governor Bush) actions to the brutal murder of an African-American:

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Democrats and MoneyPost + Comments (34)