More politics talk.

[cyrano]

So I confess that, despite being a PoliSci major in college, there are trappings to the American Electoral System that I don't understand.

Barack Obama declined to participate in the federal public financing system during the primaries.
John McCain declined to participate in the federal public financing system during the primaries.
Barack Obama is declining to participate in the federal public financing system during the general election.
John McCain says that anybody who's not participating in public financing is obviously not fit for the office.

Are there any grounds to McCain's statements here? Is there a difference between primary campaigns and general election campaigns? Or is this just a politics thing where anything your opponent does just shows that he's an incompetent puppet of special interests?

Comments

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

McCain is trying to goad Obama into participating, not because there's any difference between campaigns, but because it would limit Obama severely.

Accepting public financing puts a cap on your spending. That's great if you wouldn't spend that much anyway, because it's free money. But in a presidential election, the cap is nowhere near what the candidates want to spend. McCain is participating because the cap for the general election is much higher than for the primaries, and no matter whether public funds are accepted, there's still a per-donor limit. McCain, like most politicians, has a small number of high-money donors, so accepting the free money and the constraints that come with it makes sense for him, because ultimately he gets more money and not-much-more limits.

Obama, however, has metric fuckton of small supporters. For him to take the public funds would be stupid, because if he's losing, all of those small donors are going to throw more (small amounts of) money at him, and it will all be bunched up at key moments-- but he won't be able to spend it all at once because of the limits imposed by the public financing system.

McCain would LOVE to see Obama use public funds and be subject to the spending limits. But if he can't have that (and since Obama is not an idiot, McCain can't have that), then it's just one low-cost way to start smearing Obama's name.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

From an article I read on Y!News this morning, it seems there may be some question of whether a candidate is allowed to NOT accept public funding. It's all very confusing.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I think basically what it comes down to is that our system is outdated and archaic and (most significantly) was invented before the Internet, which Senator Obama is so successfully utilizing. Fortunately, situations like this (and the Democratic primary, and the 2000 election) should at least get people of the next generation thinking about how maybe we should make some changes...

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

With McCain, it's even more complicated, since he used the public financing to finance his campaign and yet didn't, and then opted out in the primaries, and there are lawsuits flying that he violated election law.

What he did in December, when he was in serious trouble in the primaries, was use the _promise_ of $4M in public money that he could take as collateral for a hefty loan. Things changed, and he didn't want to be capped at the public funds when he became a frontrunner. So, he can reasonably claim he never took the public funds, but he did actually _use_ them in a way. (I'm not sure I have all the details right - it's complicated stuff. And I'm really not sure who's in the right on this.)

It is bizarre to turn this into a moral issue. And dangerous - what Obama is doing is turning down money from lobbyists and large PACs. He's got a really strong, broad group of doners, by virtue of being extremely well liked by the people who like him. (People who support him are willing to open their wallets, moreso than any other current politician.) McCain, on the other hand, has a serious problem with how connected professional lobbyists are to his campaign staff. He really isn't well served by this whole debate.

And, ultimately, people don't care. This isn't an interesting scandal. I think most people look at it as, you can take the free money or not, but if you do it has a cap. If you can raise more than that, of course you opt out. You're running for President, not for the School Board, you'd have to be a moron to not take every legitimate advantage. And of course the guy with less money is going to want both of them to be capped. It gets mentally reframed into this political calculation very quickly, and nobody who pays attention to politics is surprised by or affected by political calculations.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

As to that last, I think what McCain is betting on (and what is sadly true) is that the majority of folk don't think about politics; they listen to rumours, email forwards, and Rush Limbaugh for their information. So if he can manufacture a scandal of some sort, and enough people listen just to what he says (or what the news media parrots him saying) and don't think critically, it'd be an advantage over a candidate to whom quite literally nothing has stuck.

That said, I'd like nothing more to be proven wrong and see this whole thing blow up in his face. But my faith in the collective intelligence of the American voting public has taken hit after hit, these past several months...

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Hey, check it out! Slate's got a breakdown of the situation, just for you. ;)

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

And after yesterday's Obamania chain letter, this just feels like an embarrassment of riches. (:

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Yeah, Slate's great for keeping on top of political stuff. The writers seem to understand that most of us just want to know what's going on in plain English. So they do their best, despite the vagaries of the system doing its best to confound them...