Money can’t buy happiness, but in post-Citizens United America, you can sure as hell buy a presidency.
Forbes has confirmed that billionaire Sheldon Adelson, along with his wife Miriam, has donated $10 million to the leading Super PAC supporting presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A well-placed source in the Adelson camp with direct knowledge of the casino billionaire’s thinking says that further donations will be “limitless.”
Adelson, who has built Las Vegas Sands into an global casino empire, will do “whatever it takes” to defeat Obama, this source says. And given that Adelson is worth $24.9 billion–and told Forbes in a recent rare interview about his political giving that he had been willing to donate as much as $100 million to his initial presidential preference, Newt Gingrich–that “limitless” description telegraphs potential nine-digit support of Romney.
One. Hundred. Million. Dollars. And he has literally billions more where that came from. So when Sheldon Adelson buys himself a President, what will he get for his purchase? Even if Adelson spends a mind-blowing billion on this election (and there’s nothing stopping him, frankly) he’s still ridiculously wealthy. And you can bet the expectations are that Romney will give Adelson whatever he wants.
And now keep in mind that Adelson is just one of that many billionaires backing the GOP this year at the local, state, and national level. Every politician in the country is bought and paid for now by the top fraction of the 1%. The rest of us cannot compete with this. And should Romney win due to a never ending deluge of money and attack ads to reach every American voting this year, he’ll make sure that Citizens United will remain the law of the land permanently.
We’re basically screwed as a result. SCOTUS will have to revisit the decision I’m sure, but by then it will be far too late, and with another pair of conservatives on the court or so from a Romney presidency, the game’s over. What’s to stop Adelson and his buddies from putting together a ten or even eleven digit figure and simply buying state legislatures, Governor’s mansions, Congress and the White House?
Oh wait, they’re pretty much doing that now.
By no means am I saying we should give up, but the headwinds now are a jet engine pointed in our faces that shoots out bricks of cash. They’re investing billions now to reap trillions later. Can’t beat a return like that.
redshirt
Money can’t buy me love, but it can buy me the Empire.
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but is it The Onion, or is it the NYT or WaPo?
Maude
It’s like buying a senior Ken doll.
schrodinger's cat
BTW did anyone read the tongue bath NYT has given Ann Romney
in the Style section. Oh she has such a great fashion sense, and without stylists, unlike that uppity Michelle Obama.
Violet
So does this mean we should just give up?
Mark S.
Huh, my comment must have had some boner pill or troll name hidden in it.
maya
Well,
Saul AlinskySheldon Adelson certainly helped buy the presidency for Newt.ruemara
Is it emo suicide pundit day on Balloon Juice?
schrodinger's cat
@Violet: That’s not enough, we should go hide under the bed and cower.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t want to sound catty, but from what I’ve seen, Ann Romney is one of those women who manages to make very expensive clothes look frumpy. Who can forget that hideous $90 T-shirt with the bird on it?
David in NY
American soldiers protecting illegal Israeli settlements. At least that’s what he will ask for.
Zandar
No, it’s “BJ commenter reading comprehension day”.
celticdragonchick
@ruemara:
Think of Sheldon mutiplyed by ten and you get the idea…since that is what we are facing this fall.
celticdragonchick
@ruemara:
Think of Sheldon mutiplyed by ten and you get the idea…since that is what we are facing this fall.
Hunter Gathers
If eccentric billionaires want to spend the equivalent of pocket change (to them anyway) on ads to suppress the older white vote, more power to them. The only thing massive amounts of attack ads do is drive down vote totals in certain demographics. It’s how Mittens won the primaries. The ass ton of negative ads run by him and his 3rd party buddies drove turn out down. And since the GOP primary electorate is whiter than an Alaskan snowstorm, the only political skill Mittens has is suppressing the white vote, then I say bring it on. This cracker is all for suppressing the white vote.
Bmaccnm
@David in NY: He can build his own army to protect illegal Israeli settlements. It’d probably be cheaper than buying a president.
Pangloss
Casinos and Wall Street teaming up… In the words of Condoleeza Rice, “No one could have predicted.”
amk
All that money he sunk for newt, the brute, produced jacksquat in the end. Jus’ sayin’.
celticdragonchick
@David in NY:
American aircraft bombing Iran 24/7 for months on end.
I wonder if he will be willing to pay for any warships we lose if Iran gets lucky with their stockpile of SS-N-22 “Sunburn” anti ship missiles.
SatanicPanic
If money were the only factor, my governor wouldn’t be the notoriously thrifty Jerry Brown.
Violet
@Zandar:
Was that directed at me?
Linda Featheringill
I agree with you. I’ve also wondered what the heck we’re going to do.
I had hoped that the Wisconsin experience might shed some light on the question but the only thing it really demonstrated was that “air support” is important.
If Big Money really can buy an election, why bother with elections? A committee of fat cats could just make all the decisions.
Shinobi
The part that makes me the MOST SAD is that in a theoretical universe where people based their decisions on actual information it wouldn’t matter how much money both candidates had. Advertising is evil.
amk
@SatanicPanic: Not to forget Malloy of CT.
schrodinger's cat
@beltane: She is hardly a fashion plate, her hair is pretty awful too, better than Callista but not by much. I hardly look to the wives of Presidential nominees, especially the Republican ones for fashion inspiration. BTW the ugly blouse was 990 not 90.
SatanicPanic
@Violet: I’m planning my move to Guyana, who’s going with me?
Butler
@Bmaccnm: Not a chance. Even if it was cheaper to hire and equip your own troops (and the workers comp insurance would be through the roof), you’d never get the same veneer of legitimacy that comes with a nation’s armed forces.
Violet
@maya:
Adelson’s goal was divid-and-conquer. By giving money to no-chance candidate Newt, he divided the not-Romney vote and made sure Romney won.
Butler
Anyone else think this bit was odd?:
Like he wouldn’t have donated the money if his wife hadn’t signed off on it? Or is this just an attempt to humanize him, since no one with a wife could be a bad guy?
amk
This asshole in 2008. to shrub
“Why is it fair that I should be paying a higher percentage of taxes than anyone else?”
Seanly
Their favored policies will ruin the economy. What good will all those billions be in a Mad Max-type future? Their only hope is that old guy billionaire meat is too gamey for our future cannibal overlords.
If Romney does win, I look forward to the Tea Party continuing on it’s own momentum to oppose government spending of any kind when the Republicans try to tack back to deficit spending.
SatanicPanic
@amk: We’re raining on the DOOOOOOMED parade. But in all seriousness, yes, this is bad, terrible even, but it doesn’t guarantee a Romney win. I’m not even sure it helps him all that much to be carpet bombing the airwaves. Might just make people hate him even more.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Shinobi:
__
If the majority of swing voters can’t recognize toxic bullshit on their TVs when they see it and change the channel or do something else like watching a movie instead of live programming, then we’ll get the government they deserve.
__
Post-CU, progressives are going to have to figure out a way to reach people one-on-one and convince them to turn off or tune out the TV. It really is that simple.
Hill Dweller
@amk: But Adelson was essentially the sole revenue source for Gingrich’s campaign. Romney still had way more money, and beat his opponents by exponentially outspending them.
In this case, Adelson will be one of several wingnut billionaires going after Obama. All told, the right wing is expected to raise and spend well over a billion dollars, possibly 2 billion.
Obama is expected to raise 750 million, but the Dems’ SuperPacs are only raising a fraction of the right wing totals.
The wingnuts will likely outspend the Dems 2 to 1. Certainly not the money advantage Willard enjoyed in the primaries, but an advantage nonetheless.
Villago Delenda Est
Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can rent it.
Betty Cracker
I just read an article today — can’t remember where! — about a counter-strategy to save democracy, but it would require extraordinary civic sacrifice on the part of non-wingnut billionaires like Buffet and Soros. Basically, the non-wingnut billionaires would have to pledge to give matching funds to the opponent of whomever the Kochs, Adelson, etc., bankroll. The gist of the article was that after one “nuclear winter” election season in which billionaires flushed billions down the toilet, they’d decide to stop trying to buy elections.
I don’t think this would necessarily work: For one thing, most billionaires are probably wingnuts if only because it’s in their financial interest to be, and campaigns aren’t solely about money spent — a shitty ad campaign can be expensive and counterproductive. Still, it’s an interesting idea.
Personally, I don’t think Citizens United means the Dems will never win another election. I think it makes the GOP like the New York Yankees. They’ll win more than anyone else because they have the biggest payroll, but they won’t always win.
mikefromArlington
So, Romney funded from someone that made billions from gambling which is banned in numerous states for a number of moral reasons. I’m. It sure that will play out well with most Americans if team Obama exploit that properly.
John of Indiana
“So when Sheldon Adelson buys himself a President, what will he get for his purchase? “
A WHITE man in the WHITE House.
It’s just that simple.
kindness
I’m an outlier. In my view Republicans and conservatives in the 60’s accepted Medicare & other social programs not because they were inherently good but because they kept the poor placated. Yes that is cynical but honest on my part. There has been enlightened self interest in every social program that has been allowed to go forward. None of them ever succeeded on their own merits, it was always because it helped the wealthy in a certain way.
For what ever reason, that fear of the great unwashed masses has vanished. That forgetting the dangers of discontent among the less well off is striking in that it is purposefully ignorant of human history. At a certain point in bending a stick, it will break. That stick of the human element will lash out and the following anarchy will hurt and kill many of both the progressive and conservative worlds. If they don’t see that it is in their best self interest to help the poor, they deserve what they get. Sadly the rest of us won’t but will be forced to live through it (hopefully) as well.
Mnemosyne
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s also hard to say what the lesson of Wisconsin was because you had conservatives outspending liberals 10 to 1 in order to replicate the outcome of the previous election. The guy who won was the incumbent governor who had a 50% approval rating.
I guess the lesson is that conservatives will need to spend a minimum of 10 times more than Obama to make the election close, but I’m not sure what the extra amount needed to overcome Obama’s incumbent advantage would have to be.
Jennifer
Before we all start running around shrieking about how the sky is falling, consider what happened Tuesday in blood-red North Dakota.
On the ballot was an initiative to do away with all local taxes and replace them with revenues from oil & gas production. The anti-tax, pro-initiative folks spent 132 times what the anti-initiative side spent, and the initiative failed by over 3 to 1. Apparently there wasn’t enough money spent to convince the voters that having no control over funding for local needs would be a good thing.
Also on the ballot was one of those goofy religious exemption constitutional amendments, which would have covered not only allowing employers to deny health coverage of contraception, but would also have covered things like pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions due to personal religious beliefs, and so on. It, also, had outsized financial support. It went down by a margin of 2 to 1.
Probably our best bet to maximize the funding we DO have is to run ads reminding voters that there’s a reason so many wealthy people are trying to buy the presidency for Rmoney, and it has nothing to do with what’s best for the nation or most of the people in it. We need to adopt a strategy of getting people to ratchet up their distrust of any candidate or issue with outsized funding. Something to let them know that the more ads they see for a candidate or issue = the harder someone with a lot of money is trying to convince them to vote for something that will harm their interests.
Stooleo
I’m looking forward to the new Sheldon Adelson wing of the White House. The neon, statues and valet parking will be totally worth it.
mouse tolliver
I think the only thing that can stop Citizens United is direct action against the networks that run these ads.
RalfW
The thing that worries me is that I read things like this and I think, why even bother giving the Obama campaign a hundred bucks this year? What good will it do. One wonders if part of the point of these very flashy announcements of huge bankrolls is meant to dissuade small Dem donors.
amk
@Hill Dweller: Looking at the recent election cycles, where money was spent like water, we have had the billionaires self-financing (a la mittbot in 2008) in CA (whitman, fiorina) and CT (that wwf dame) and coming up short despite their millions in campaings. WI recall was the only outlier in that and even there, they had to spend 10 to 1 (?) to get a piddly single digit win.
So I am not freaking out over the CU money though it’s a concern from the democracy point of view.
El Tiburon
Look, you Communist, get over it.
He may spend a billion, but that means somebody is MAKING a billion.
And we all win if a media-conglomerate makes more political money so they can better fund our AWEsome news media industry.
So put that in your pipe and smoke ya some.
David in NY
@kindness:
The death of Communism and the death of the unions.
Zandar
@Betty Cracker: The problem with that is all the billions go to the same asshole media companies in the first place.
David in NY
@RalfW:
This. Very worrisome. I even feel it myself — haven’t given yet and not because I don’t have the money. Somehow when I think about it, I have an odd feeling of pointlessness that I didn’t used to have. I suspect I’ll get around to it, but if I, a true yellow-dog Democrat, feel this way, I can only imagine the effect it has on the somewhat less committed.
redshirt
A Mormon high priest accepting money from a gambling tycoon in order to buy the votes of dip shit Jesus freaks.
Yay Amercia!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Keep in mind during the Gilded Age the purchase of government was a lot more blatant and reform did happen despite the Robber Barons.
For one think, there is only so much politician to go around. President Romney will have to disappoint some rich dork and rich dorks don’t accept that.
Hill Dweller
@Mnemosyne: Willard has the media working for him for free right now. He is a pathological liar, but you’d never know that from listening to the media.
The state of the economy over the next few months will likely be the determinative factor. If it rebounds or Obama can convince enough people that the Republicans are sabotaging the economy for their political gain, he should win.
All that said, the American electorate’s ignorance can’t be overstated.
rlrr
@redshirt:
Mormon’s have a history of working for big money in Vegas…
Shinobi
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Simple and yet impossible.
El Tiburon
“Shameless” on Showtime fits the bill.
My take is that it is not so much the media elites, but the public at large who would much rather see rich wives in Beverly Hills rather than poor white trash in the hills of West Virginia.
But your point is well-taken. “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia” was a compelling documentary. The world these people live in, to a middle-class white dude like me, is much more interesting than the milieu of the wealthy.
patrick II
This comment thread focuses on the presidency, but smaller elections all over the country are going to be bought for less money than it takes to buy a presidency. And with time and patience the majority of people who have any chance to at all will those candidates with fealty to unlimited cash. Fifty state houses, uncounted towns and cities, all will be cheaper than the presidency. That goes on now, but it is going to be a whole lot worse.
Xecky Gilchrist
This is definitely a concern. If 50 hours of campaign advertising a week are effective, just imagine what 5000 will do.
rlrr
@Hill Dweller:
All that said, the American electorate’s ignorance can’t be overstated.
See the 2000, 2004, and 2010 election results for evidence.
Bobby Thomson
The one silver lining is that at least those billionaires will be spending a lot of that money in the American economy.
Rommie
There’s nothing really stopping a Mittens and a Congress all on the same side from pulling a reverse FDR and adding two more SC Justices to secure their majority for decades.
If the SC is okay with CU, and it helps secure The Big Win, then they’ll be fine with more friends. Now you’re into revolution territory to do anything about it, and there’s nothing more the SCV-ers would love to do than get the opportunity to play the treason card.
Saying all that – there’s really no reason to expect the D’s to get out-spent more than 2-1, and that’s not a disaster at all with the right message. There’s a diminishing return to an ad flood – there’s only so many commercial spots on radio and TV, and only so much space in the paper. Any more than that and you get into absurd territory – 20 pages of nothing but attack ads in a paper, or 100 percent political ads that lock out everything else during prime time that’ll make Hypno-Toad entertaining in comparison. There’s only so much time available to buy advertisements. I’d be more concerned about Mr. Las Vegas trying to crowd out the other side by buying up all the TV/radio slots to prevent their use.
redshirt
@kindness: Good points. There is a formula that would express what you’re getting at it, I think. Essentially, the variables are:
Power, exercised via control.
Goal – the elite want as much control as possible, as easy as possible.
Obstacles: The 99%.
Tactic: Divide and Conquer. Use the illusion of freedom to keep the majority of the population vested in the systems of control the powerful are using.
Threat/benefit: The poor. It is in the interests of the 1% to have a certain percentage of the population dirt poor/in prison, as this provides both positive and negative reinforcements to the rest of the citizens.
Overreach: If this percentage gets too high, danger can result.
Thus, the overall goal is to maximize the use of the poor/imprisoned to facilitate acceptance by the rest of the 1% method’s of control.
I would imagine that percentage is around 10% of the population.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Seanly:
It’s been noted before, but these meddlesome billionaires are all geriatrics for a reason: Every single one of these fuckers know they’ll be long dead by the time the worst of the consequences arrive.
It’s like leaving a turd in the punch bowl on your way out the door.
Chris
@kindness:
Fall of communism.
Although even at the height of communism, there were still quite a few conservatives who saw no need to placate the people.
Kane
Adelson, Trump, Romney and the Koch brothers are all wealthy, but by no measure are they elite.
Mike in NC
Sheldon Adelson was damn good in “Prometheus”, though.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Jennifer:
That would have worked out really well for them in 20-30 years, once the reservoir was depleted.
Good on those voters for not letting themselves get hoodwinked.
Stevie314
No Democrat should ever step foot in a Las Vegas Sands owned casino. Ever.
No Democrat should ever watch Celebrity Apprentice. Ever.
If the Kochs’ make any consumer goods, don’t buy them.
These bastards only know money. And that’s where you have to hurt them. It worked on Rush and on ALEC, and togther, the purchasing power of 40% of Americans counts for more than their billions.
Freddie deBoer
I’m with you. I tried to say something similar in a post yesterday: I just don’t see any way that we can break the grip of the wealthy on our democracy from within the system.
Quaker in a Basement
Dem messaging needs to treat Adelson as Mitt’s running mate.
amk
Twitterdom
kindness
@redshirt: Good response. Well thought out and presented. Myself, I don’t think it will be the poor’s revolt that will upend the system and bring about a new French Revolution in America. It will be the middle classes despair. They can afford guns. They have something more to lose.
samuel
Meanwhile morons like Cole were on here complaining when the the Obama campaign decided they were going to accept superPAC money. Probably because that was the bile that Greenwald was spewing at the time and Cole is utterly incapable of thinking for himself and seeing the big picture.
Left Coast Tom
If the sky is falling then how did Jerry Brown manage to win in 2010 against someone spending $115 million of her own money? I think Whitman really just made people sick of her voice. Seems to me Democrats should look at California in 2010 as an example of what to do…something worked, how can it be made to work again?
GregB
@Hill Dweller:
The great and glorious Vietnam war hero George W. Bush and the coward draft dodger John Kerry agree.
Elizabelle
@RalfW:
I wonder that too, about dissuading small Democratic voters.
Or reducing the money they do contribute.
matryoshka
I read something the other day (possibly by Matt Taibbi?) that listed the 10 major donors to the Republican party and exactly what they wanted from their investment. Across the board, they were after stripping away employment and environmental protections.
Violet
Is there some sort of website that people can go to to see who’s funding candidates? I’m talking not just donations directly to the candidate, but something that lists large donors, any Super PACs the candidate has and any info on who’s funding the Super PAC. Maybe a short summary like:
“Romney’s major donors/SuperPAC donors:
Sheldon Adelson — $10 million, the casino business
Y — $5 million, Y business
Z — $5 million, Z business”
Does something like that exist? I’m not all that interested in people who are giving $300. I’m interested in who’s bankrolling this stuff.
gene108
This is why people need to quit whining about Romney’s money. He isn’t rich.
Not by the standards of the truly rich. By their standards Romney’s just sort of upper-middle class.
Linda Featheringill
California:
Perhaps I should study the California election of 2010. It might make me feel better. And I might actually learn something, too.
Violet
UGH. My comment’s in mod. I forgot about that c a sino word.
Copy and paste:
Is there some sort of website that people can go to to see who’s funding candidates? I’m talking not just donations directly to the candidate, but something that lists large donors, any Super PACs the candidate has and any info on who’s funding the Super PAC. Maybe a short summary like:
“Romney’s major donors/SuperPAC donors:
Sheldon Adelson—$10 million, the ca si no business
Y—$5 million, Y business
Z—$5 million, Z business”
Does something like that exist? I’m not all that interested in people who are giving $300. I’m interested in who’s bankrolling this stuff.
Raven
Sorry, I think it’s always been this way.
Jebediah
@Hill Dweller:
I take some comfort in remembering that Walker needed over three times that margin to keep his seat. In Obama versus Romney, you don’t have a sizable portion of the election questioning the legitimacy/appropriateness of the election itself. I don’t know much about Barrett, but I am guessing Rmoney is way more unlikable. And he will have to debate at some point. I am assuming that Obama will not throw him nothing but fawning softballs. Debates will cost Rmoney measurable amounts of support. Also, there is only so much ad time to buy, no matter how many billions you have.
Scott Alloway
As an aside, nice Gordon Dickson reference in the title. Will the George as dragon come out ahead?
eric
wanna see why obama wins…
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election-2012/mitt-romney-insurance-companies-allowed-deny-coverage-pre-existing-conditions-article-1.1095585
That is the headline. You can see the Obama ad now. that is a HORRIBLE position to take. Mind boggling…..
If Mitt was one of Anne’s stallions, he would be put down.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
At least the yankees money occasionally buys talent. All the CU money in the world and all they can buy is mittens? I realize that they just want a puppet but still. They couldn’t buy a better one?
matryoshka
Violet, this may give you a place to start:
“http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/right-wing-billionaires-behind-mitt-romney-20120524”
Not sure I did the link right. . .
rlrr
@eric:
that is a HORRIBLE position to take.
That’s OK, Mitt will change it by tomorrow…
Culture of Truth
4tehlulz
@eric: You know, if there is someone who can un-kill himself, it’s the empty shell known as Mitt Romney.
matryoshka
@Violet:
eric
@rlrr: he already confirmed it through a spokesperson TWICE…
he will say stuff at the debates that will end him. he is not a good deabter, he does not think well on his feet, he is out of touch and, bet of all, he is not a true-believing paleoconsverative by nature so he cant just spout reactionary platitudes off the cuff. Dead man walking
Omnes Omnibus
Zander, I know you are not saying that we should give up. Are you saying instead, “Aux barricades!”? Personally, I think we will soon reach a point where diminishing marginal returns on ads make every buy the same as burning cash. If these assholes want to burn their cash, let them.
eric
@4tehlulz: the key thing resonating with liberals/leftists/progressives/democrats is not fear of Mitt the candidate, but fear of the effects of unlimited money. Were this a fight with equal money, we would be talking about 2016 GOP potential nominees. I would still be very surprised that any of the top tier guys wants to hitch his wagon to Mitt. Were I Daniels or CHristie or Rubio I would rather rise or fall on my own political instincts than be tied to a guy that has NO instincts and cannot even fake having a core.
Ruckus
@samuel:
You are such a putz that I decided to cover you in pie so I don’t have to listen to your crap.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
You are thinking of EJ Dionne’s column today.
NBC, ABC, CBS approve this message. Sheesh.
eric
@Elizabelle: please tell me that was snark…please. please. begging you
Forum Transmitted Disease
@gene108: Please. He’s 1%. Not .1%, like Adelson, but certainly of the 1%, and if the Dems can’t make the case that he is so rich that he would forever be grossly out of touch with the majority of voters, then they don’t deserve to win even a single vote.
fasteddie9318
@Bobby Thomson:
Mm, yeah, I guess so. Billionaires paying other billionaires, first to make ads and then for air time, doesn’t exactly put people to work as efficiently as taxing the fuckers and funding infrastructure projects.
Paul in KY
We & Pres, Obama need to turn that into an appearance problem for the Mittster.
Paint Mr. Adelson as undemocratic, buying presidency for nefarious reasons, etc, etc.
Elizabelle
@eric:
Regrettably not snark.
I would solve this problem by telling Democratic supporters: they cannot match your feet on the ground.
Give a very small individual contribution, if you must, but get out there and register at least 3-4 voters. Personally.
And make sure voters you know get to the polls this fall.
They can outspend us.
We can outwork them.
FlipYrWhig
Of course for $100,000,000 you could live up to your epithet as Job Creator and pay two thousand people $50K each.
Elizabelle
Another thing:
turn off the TV when one of Crossroads GPS’s anguished “Obama caused the deficit; he’s stealing our children’s futures” ads come on.
Leave it off as long as you can.
And write a postcard to your local TV station to let them know that you turned off the TV at 5:37 and why. Every time you do it, for a while.
It would be awesome if the TV stations lost viewers while they accepted bag money from GOP SuperPACs.
The affiliates should come to rue Citizens United.
Yutsano
@Elizabelle: Willard still has no ground game. He has very few local offices and no one selling his message personally. That is his true weakness. And Obama’s strength. You can counter a shit ton of negative ads in a 15 minute visit with someone, especially if they are receptive to your message. This is winnable. UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!! doesn’t buy a ground game.
fasteddie9318
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, this sounds rather suspiciously like the Great Demographic Shift that is eventually going to totally destroy the Republican Party, just not this election cycle, but maybe in the next one, except when they win that one it will be coming in the one after that, unless they win that one too in which case it’s just once more over the horizon! Only this particular theory also relies on the American voting public eventually wising up to what’s happening, and the American public doesn’t do “wising up.” Big shiny box say Democrat bad, me vote for Republican.
Meanwhile, even if we eventually will get to the place where demographics will doom the Republican Party and the American people will stop being so goddamned Pavlovian in their response to political advertising, in the meantime we’re being gifted with a permanent Taliban wing on the Supreme Court, gerrymandered redistricting at the state level designed to sustain Republican majorities, voter purges of the insufficiently white and Republican, and voting machines that count votes however their Republican corporate owners feel they should be counted.
Or maybe I’m just feeling pissy today.
kindness
@Elizabelle: Or you can click on all the web ads you see that are Crossroads (or other right wingnut stuff). Then Google will bleed them dry. I think they get charged just under a dollar for each link click.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Linda Featheringill: It is instructional. Whitman outspent Brown by insane amounts of money, but her bizarre conduct when dealing with the press – seriously, the clips are freaking creepy – and her unwillingness to meet with voters made all the money she threw into the effort meaningless. She came off like an autistic version of Mitt, one that could barely choke back a murderous rage at having to associate with the commoners.
There are a couple of other issues:
1. Brown and his father were two of the best governors California ever had. Old-timers – not that Cali has a lot of those – remembered that and voted accordingly.
2. Whitman apologists point to Fiorina as the problem. Fiorina never polled above single digits, even though she was actually far more personable and less weird than Whitman. Fiorina was doomed from the start as everyone in California knows somebody that worked at HP while she was there, and that ugly, ugly legacy is going to take years to go away.
Whitman had way more money than Romney and got crushed. But she also came off as way weirder and far more hostile than Romney ever has, and I don’t think any amount of money was going to overcome that. It might with Mitt.
Patricia Kayden
They could save their money. I’m sure there are loads of people who will not vote at all because they are so bitterly “disappointed” with President Obama.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/readers-respond-still-waiting-for-our-first-black-president/2012/06/08/gJQAKAoBOV_story.html
Jebediah
@samuel:
Do you ever have anything to say that isn’t filtered through your obsession with Cole?
dww44
@RalfW: I got a call from the DSCC this morning and countless email solicitations from DGA, DNC, the DCC, and every other entity/candidate out there raising funds for Democractic candidates. I thought the same thing, plus I am genuinely irritated by the constant barrage of requests for donations. Where does it all end? It occurred to me that perhaps I should be donating all my little monies to a committed effort to get CU overturned once and for all, via an amendment. Which, of course, is not gonna happen unless Democrats are elected.
My state’s Democratic party sent out a request yesterday for support of the ONLY Dem candidate for statewide office this fall, and that is for a seat on the Public Service Commission, where, if elected, he will be a minority of one and the Southern Company will still get its permits to build more coal fired plants.
My newly minted (2010) tea party Congressman has NO opposition, as this city was gerrymandered to make that seat a safe one for the GOP. They split us between 2 districts, with the minority section given over to the Dem Representative in the city 90 miles to the west. The North section was given to this guy who lives 120 miles down I-75 to the South.
In 2009, this GOP representative, then a state senator, had a very public hissy fit on the floor of the state legislature when a resolution was submitted to congratulate Obama on his election. So, yeah, we are a good example of what happens when the levers of power are held entirely by extremist Republicans and those who used to be moderate are now bought and paid for and do nothing to impede the movement ever rightward.
MCA1
What happens when, instead of just buying ad time, the superPAC’s figure out they can get a better r.o.i. from buying canvassers and setting up on-the-ground political operations all their own? With billions of dollars available, one guy like Adelson could set up and endow a permanent shadow infrastructure to serve his party/candidate of choice in every state in the union. I’m actually sort of surprised this hasn’t happened already. One place I still think Obama retains an advantage in this cycle is in local infrastructure and gotv offices.
Elizabelle
@Yutsano:
Exactly.
I am hoping that unlimited corporate cash will turn out to be the most expensive Kool-Aid Republicans ever drank.
However, I worry that all that negative advertising can hurt Democrats a lot down-ticket.
Soonergrunt
@Paul in KY: Given that there’s video of him saying that he “spent time in the Army, unfortunately it was the US Army and not the Israeli Army” it would be nice to find that, produce a commercial or two asking just where loyalties lie for the billionaire who seeks to own Mitt Romney.
Of course, that could enter into (bullshit) complaints of anti-semitism, ala the Dreyfuss Affair.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@gene108:
Yep.
At $250 million, he is to them what we are to him.
“The Help”.
samuel
@Ruckus: When you feel the need to announce your intentions to ignore someone you really are showing an utter lack of the ability to understand irony.
Mnemosyne
@MCA1:
Though people talk about CU as though it means that anything goes, setting up actual campaign offices is still illegal. CU allows massive advertising buys, but not a whole lot else.
Elizabelle
@Stevie314:
What Stevie said. I will never set foot in the Venetian again.
Anybody local to keep an eye on whether and when the stores within Adelson’s complex start noticing a drop-off in business traffic?
That would be satisfying.
samuel
@Jebediah: No, I quite enjoy pointing out what a naive, stupid imbecile Cole is as often as possible with plenty of historical evidence just a quick search toolbar away.
Thank you for the opportunity to do it once again.
Omnes Omnibus
@fasteddie9318: There is only so much advertising time available. Assume Adelson buys it all; now what?
Maybe you are feeling pissy, but I am feeling fed up with people claiming that we are DOOMED. People can win against big money.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: They REALLY pushed this in Wisconsin. Crossroads had door hangers who were also interacting with citizens and selling the message. It was like an extra ground game for Scotty Boy.
@Omnes Omnibus: Big money does NOT equal votes. Just ask Senator Fiorina and Governor Whitman.
quannlace
Well, there’s only two things Romney’s promised if he becomes Prez. More tax breaks for the wealthy and repealing everything Obama did during his term. Affordable Care Act? Gone. Dont Ask, Don’t Tell? Reinstated. I also hear he’s going to use his personal fortune to build a time machine so he can resurrect Osama Bin Laden.
eric
@Omnes Omnibus: alas, i must quibble. Were that truly the case then there would be viable third party candidates all over, but it is the money advantage that the two major parties and their candidates have that make that virtually impossible. The only reason Romney’s does not frighten me as much as it otherwise would is that Romney makes McCain look like Julius Caesar.
ruemara
@Zandar: You know that reading comprehension also covers subtext of the entire written page, not just a portion? Just saying, Z. And yes, I do find most coverage of the money issue to be one step above turning on Lacuna Coil, wrapping yourself in black gauze and turning the black eyeliner up to 11 before you settle in with this month’s issue of Goth Beauty.
@David in NY: Seriously? I don’t have 100$. I have 3$, 10$ there. And I put in time. I have no reason to be hopeful, because 100$ to me is hard to find for anything. How do you people lose your drive so easily? I don’t get it. This is important.
ericblair
@MCA1:
This is the interesting part. Why aren’t they? I’m convinced that the boots-on-the-ground stuff and funding the local tossup races would be a far better use of their money than running four more attack ads for Romney per commercial break .
There are probably a few reasons. These guys seem to buy into the “great man” theory of history for obvious reasons, and don’t believe that letting the little people run things would ever work. Also, the goopers have already outsourced most of the ground game to the churches, and starting up another one is a logistical nightmare that attracts every low-level scam artist and grifter around to suck up the dough.
Or these guys really believe that it’s the pure, pristine power of the almighty dollar itself, and not how it’s used, that determines the winner: when you’ve spent your life directly equating power with money and vice versa it’s probably a little hard to get out of that mindset.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I don’t think having the most money will win you an election. I think that lots of small donors giving ~.5 what a few large donors give means a few more enthusiastic voters.
I will be pissed at anyone who says there is no difference between the two parties. They were saying that in 2000. Think about how different the Supreme Court would have been had Gore won. CU alone is enough to explain the difference, not to mention not invading Iraq and not cutting taxes.
chopper
yeah, that worked out.
eric
@Yutsano: i think big money helped Walker. If the candidate is horrific then money may not help, but all things being equal, I would rather have a huge money advantage than none at all.
eric
@chopper: but it did work out. Newt lasted FAR FAR longer than he should or could have without that money and had Romney truly screwed the pooch, then you would be looking at nominee Newt and the creation of a new democratic majority in the House
chopper
it’s going to be hilarious when people realize that 2 billion in conservative superpac money could just as easily have plugged the hole in any of 33 state budgets. including adelson’s nevada.
cat48
Adelson wants all Unions gone & Israelis left alone to do anything they want. No peace plan. He was very clear about this during the primaries.
rlrr
@cat48:
And the US President to defer all foreign policy decisions to Benjamin Netanyahu…
Yutsano
@cat48: I’m sure gutting any regulations that could possibly hurt his business can go away too, except complete liability lawsuit immunity. Gotta protect teh Job Creators dontcha know.
Davis X. Machina
This will circumscribe your internet choices to some small extent.
Tommybones
@David in NY: Does Adelson want war with Iran? To protect the Homeland? (Israel)
Hill Dweller
If the economy doesn’t pick up, Obama is going to have a hard time winning.
Initial unemployment claims were up again last week, and the previous week’s drop looks less impressive after being revised up. The job market is crap, and private sector job creation has stalled.
If job creation doesn’t pick up(and I don’t see that happening absent some sort of stimulus), Obama is going to have to start explicitly blaming Republicans. He certainly has plenty of evidence to make an effective case.
Dude in Princeton
@Mike in NC: I thought he was great in Goldfinger, too.
Mnemosyne
@ericblair:
I need to see your evidence that conservatives would see this as a bug and not a feature. Besides, I don’t think I would call Dick Armey a low-level scam artist.
Mnemosyne
@Hill Dweller:
Meh. Reagan won in a landslide in 1984 when unemployment was even worse.
If there’s a crash of some kind, that would be really bad, but if we keep chugging along as we are now, I’m not too worried.
Brachiator
@eric:
I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing.
@Tommybones:
A very good question. The answer, however, might not be very reassuring.
trollhattan
@Left Coast Tom:
The same electorate (okay, a much smaller cohort of them) were just bought off by the tobacco companies, who swung a hefty pro-Prop 29 majority into a slim loss.
Meg’s campaign was run stupidly despite her vast sums of cash because, well, they were grifters who mostly wanted a hunk of her vast sums of cash. Big tobacco is much, much better at the game and it showed again June 5.
TenguPhule
An IED to the face.
arguingwithsignposts
@kindness:
I am not so sure about that. How much of that despair will be turned inward. “You’re a failure because you couldn’t bootstrap your way out of this?” Or turned on loved ones as well? It’s a frightening thought, I admit, but one I can imagine.
TenguPhule
Because Boots on the ground aren’t sexy dick-swinging dollars dancing on everybody’s screen.
lacp
Willard Romney’s Unlimited Corporate Cash Tour 2012 – a Sheldon Adelson Production
gogol's wife
@David in NY:
Why are people in Moscow going out on the street in 4 below zero or pouring rain? They could just say, I have an odd feeling of pointlessness. (This is not to mention all the other places where people go out and stand up to tyranny at the risk of not just their livelihoods but their lives, it’s just the one I happen to be interested in.) We’re human beings and we have to keep fighting even when it seems hopeless.
Catsy
@samuel:
So when’s the wedding?
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
And when Russians were denied permission to hold an in-person protest, they sent in the toys.
Hill Dweller
@Mnemosyne: I hope you’re right.
Obama should compare Reagan’s(and both Bush’s) increased spending and public sector hiring during his recession to the wingnuts’ current budget cutting and public sector layoffs, and explain where unemployment would be if we had followed Reagan’s path.
arguingwithsignposts
@gogol’s wife:
Guesses:
a ) they really are in a crisis.
b ) they have a very recent (and lengthy) history of getting tired of bullshit and doing something about it – and getting results. (cf., Greece and Spain)
c ) their xboxes and PS3’s only work when the power is on, and they don’t have “Mad Men.”
85 percent of our population is anesthetized (bread and circuses), and until the shit hits the fan, they won’t get up. That’s my pessimistic view.
Left Coast Tom
@trollhattan:
pro-Prop 29 wasn’t airing ads at all, as far as I could tell. Jerry Brown was, but Whitman was carpet-bombing the airwaves.
While I voted for it, I really think pro-Prop 29 messed up badly in not restricting the research money to in-state institutions. They really had no good answer to that criticism, if the goal is just generic research rather than helping the CA economy (such as the stem cell bioresearch bond) then why shouldn’t federal taxes rather than CA taxes pay for that?
arguingwithsignposts
@samuel:
That’s funny, because I haven’t seen you post link one. Your standard post is “Wrong again Cole is WRONG! AGAIN! BECAUSE I SAID SO!”
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: Durfs gotta durf. And the best part is he can’t even vote in the US.
fasteddie9318
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well “now what?” is the question we’re going to be answering in a few months, no? I’m not optimistic about relying on the sagacity and discernment of the American public to see that the airwaves have been bought by one side, and then to make the effort themselves to seek out the other side of the story. Now, in this particular case, maybe Obama’s incumbency and Romney’s many inadequacies are enough to counter all the money. But in 2016? My money is on “TV tell me vote Republican, so me vote Republican.”
I don’t think real democracy can survive a voter base that is equal parts ignorant and apathetic, combined with unlimited access to campaign funds on the part of a political movement that will do or say anything to hold on to power.
David in NY
@ruemara: I’m not exactly sure why. Not my usual mode, and I don’t expect it to continue. But if I’m feeling, even temporarily, like things are getting beyond the ability of anything I do to affect, I’m really afraid others will lack the “enthusiasm.”
@gogol’s wife: And ditto.
I’m not trying to justify it; it is, or was, just a fact. And I don’t much like it either.
fasteddie9318
@TenguPhule: Well, and boots on the ground involves paying lots of Poors and Almost Poors, and that’s not nearly as rewarding as just circulating the money around to your billionaire peers.
Xenos
Does anybody have an estimate of what 100% of television ad time would cost, at least as regular rates?
Unless there is some sort of FCC regulation (hah!) that keeps rates steady, won’t you get prices rising tremendously as demand increases? Is there an economist in the house?
Elizabelle
@Hill Dweller:
Yeah, I hope Obama’s not betting anything on the economy, because so much of it is out of his hands.
Meanwhile, Helene Cooper at the NYTimes is flaming over Obama putting much of the blame where it belongs.
Cooper’s done this before. She’s as despicable a Villager as Anne Kornblut.
Cooper’s counting on amnesia of everything since 2000, even while acknowledging that many Americans do not agree with her premise.
PS: much self awareness in your comment, Mitt? And note how resolute Cooper makes Romney sound. Language.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
No, tobacco taxes have been raised by previous ballot measures. As another poster noted, the criticisms about how the money might be used raised a lot of red flags. We have had a number of designated use propositions before, which is crazy given the size and nature of California’s budget problems. A proposition which in effect said, “yeah, we know the state is going broke and you need teachers and cops, but here, vote on something to raise taxes on tobacco and spend the money only on cancer related issues, even though this may duplicate other research spending.”
Whitman was an amateur who got beat despite her money. But it’s not like the people behind her were total dopes. Similarly, Carly Fiorina got beat as well, despite the money backing her.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
The funniest part is, whining about how mmmmeeeaaaannnnn the Democrats are to them is Tactic #1 for Republicans.
Is the problem that Cooper is sensing some copyright infringement? “No fair, we’re the ones who get to whine about the other side oppressing us, not you guys!”
flukebucket
Bullshit. Jamie Dimon still has his job.
Calouste
@El Tiburon:
__
I always thought it interesting that the US had Dallas and Dynasty, where the UK had Eastenders and Coronation Street.
RaflW
@matryoshka:
What blows my mind is that in the past, the rich could live far enough from the destruction to not be very impacted at all.
But as climate change – the thing they hate dealing with most – intensifies, there will be no refuge.
I had hoped a few years ago that the major insurance conglomerates and Lloyds and such would wake up and see that their portfolio risk is growing wildly as AGW accelerates.
But now I think they’ve mostly become another club of corporate grifters and just plan to cancel everyone’s coverage or strategically go bankrupt while bonusing themselves like mad.
It’s really starting to have a Mad Max feel to it all.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
The Helene Cooper who wrote an article hinting Obama was falling back on the job because he has dinner every night with his daughters and wife?
The Village. ugh.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator: This is a good point about ballot measures- people really are sick of them, and it doesn’t take much for people to vote against them. I’m pretty reflexively anti-ballot measure on the principle that I don’t know enough about the budget to adequetely assess what the impact will be. I will admit to voting for light rail though.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
I don’t really agree with that characterization, but that’s how the anti-29 ads framed it and it clearly worked. The LAO’s analysis is here.
http://californiansforacure.org/facts/Prop29Analysis.pdf?_c=10n4bbdi5kkpvno&sr_t=p
liberal
Uh, bunker-busters dropped on Iranian nuke sites?
slippy
@Paul in KY: Oh, let’s just start talking non-stop about Adelson right now, and Adelson the Traitor, and Sheldon Adelson, the rich fuck who is buying a President.
Let’s make Adelson’s support a major minus for rMoney.
gogol's wife
@arguingwithsignposts:
Oh, I don’t expect Americans to go out into the streets any time soon. I’m just saying, don’t stop sending in your $5 or $10 to Obama because you feel discouraged. And don’t stop voting, for God’s sake! (re the post about the disenchanted youth the other day)
I’ve said it before, but everyone should read The Brothers Karamazov. It brings home how important small actions are. You have no idea what the larger results of each small action are.
LanceThruster
All Adelson wants is for Rmoney to genuflect in the direction of Chosanistan.
Is that so wrong?
Why shoud they have to run their apartheid state on their own dime?
LanceThruster
All Adelson wants is for Rmoney to genuflect in the direction of Chosanistan.
Is that so wrong?
Why shoud they have to run their apartheid state on their own dime?
liberal
@cat48:
If “left alone” means “given billions of dollars/yr,”, then yes, please leave me alone, too.
burritoboy
Candidates with enormous piles of money get beaten like a drum all the time. Otherwise, we would have had President Nelson Rockefeller, Huntsman would have beaten Romney to death (Huntsman makes Romney look like a homeless dude in terms of wealth), David Koch would have gotten more than 1% of the vote in 1980’s Presidential election, California would now have Governor Whitman, Michael Huffington would have beaten Diane Feinstein, and on and on.
JenJen
@eric: Eric, I’m inclined to agree with you. From my vantage point here in battleground Ohio, people already know exactly who they’re going to vote for in November, and really aren’t up for persuasion.
I think this is one of those elections where it really will come down to the Presidential Debates, and if that ends up being the case, I’m all in for President Obama. Mitt is gonna fuck up on the national stage. He just is.
Jebediah
@JenJen:
Yes. I think his inability to be graceful when disagreed with will combine with his weirdness and out-of-touch-ness to really turn off a lot of the voters who vote based on likeability. Substance-wise, I think his platform of “Everything for the 1%! Fuck everybody else!” might also turn some folks off.
fuckwit
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
This handwringing assumes that voters get all their information from expensive TV ads and don’t, like, actually talk to each other.
Which may be true, but it doesn’t HAVE to be true.
Get out and talk to people. Go door-to-door, the old-fashioned way.
Billionaires can lie and spout bullshit and brainwashing very easily on TV, but it’s a lot harder to do that face-to-face. Relationships with real people are stronger than branding bullshit.
And since the 1% assholes are in their own little bubble, they never get out to where we are, outside their little bubble. And we’re the ones who do the voting– their actual votes are miniscule.
As long as there is still democracy– one person, one vote– we can beat the billionaires. There are way more of us than there are of them. Always remember that.
I think the old fashioned word for this is: solidarity.
Lancelot Link
Some of that money has to go to other things than TV-ads, like coordinating the smearing of voting-machine-fraud activists and paying fake leftists to act as purity-trolls to drive down turnout on the left.
LanceThruster
Adelson at his first GOP campaign event —
http://www.dependablerenegade.com/dependable_renegade/2012/06/sheldon-adelson-at-his-first.html
I laughed so hard I plotzed!
Nathanael
Guns trump money. Control of the banking computers also trumps money. The FBI has, effectively, both.
I’m actually surprised that the FBI hasn’t been used more aggressively against the criminal element among the right-wing billionaires.