Campbell Brown: Obama broke promise on campaign finance.

Courtesy of CNN.com.

This seems October Surprise-ish to me. While the republicans have been whining about Obama's fundraising efforts in the last few weeks, we didn't have anyone in the media really picking up on it. Now we have an opinion piece in the last week of the election on CNN basically calling Obama a liar, and this issue is being raised all of a sudden, completely out of the blue. Something smells.

Also, Brown is wrong.

Obama said he would participate in the publc finance system if the two campaigns could come to an agreement on how to use that system. Here's what Obama said last November, almost a year ago like Brown says:

From MSNBC and written back in June, just after Obama became the democratic nominee.

The way campaigns have sidestepped the public finance limits in the past is through the use of 527 groups. These are private groups using private money to help a candidate get elected, while simultaneously denying any connection to that candidate. This allows the group to produce ads, telephone calls, etc. on behalf of a candidate using private funds that aren't a part of the public funds made available to each candidate equally. So a candidate with tons of 527 groups working on their behalf has, in effect, an unfair financial advantage if both candidates are using the equally distributed public funds as part of the public finance system. Swift Boat Veterans For Truth was accused of working on behalf of George W. Bush in 2004, and moveon.org was accused of working for John Kerry the same year.

Obama has said all along that he wants to remove the presence and influence of these groups from the election, because it's clearly a way to game the system and use private funds. This is why he said he would participate in the public finance system if the two campaigns could agree on how to use it. The lawyers from the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign got together at the start of the general election season, and according to Obama's lawyers, an agreement on how to use the public finance system could not be reached. So, Obama walked. He didn't break a promise if that's what happened.

Obama has been pushing his fundraising philosophy and model for this entire run. Throughout the primaries and the general election he's been touting his campaign as a grassroots campaign that prides itself on donations from regular people only in amounts that they can afford. I can't remember a time when this wasn't Obama's message. Obama and McCain both abstained from public funds in the primary election, because both candidates knew they could raise more privately and the public system has limits. So even if Obama did break a promise, which in my opinion he didn't, apparently nobody cared until now.

Besides that, what stopped McCain from doing the same thing? If McCain thought he could raise as much money privately as Obama, he would have absolutely opted out of the public system from the very beginning. He didn't, because he knows he can't. And now that Obama has shown how phenomenally successful his private fundraising strategy is, even though there was nothing stopping McCain from doing the same thing, everybody is crying foul.

Nobody cared about this when it was a close race. If Obama outspent the McCain campaign 2:1 and was losing, nobody would care. People only care because Obama is going to win, and they're looking for any excuse possible to call shenanigans on his campaign and invalidate the legitimacy of his election.

One of the reasons that this argument against Obama has been ineffective, is that it is essentially trying to convince millions of people who have donated to his campaign that he is a liar for accepting their money.

I mean, who do they think they're going to convince? The people who gave him the money in the first place?

Brown is trying to position herself as some sort of unbiased attack dog. Her argument is a bit dodgy and leaves out some key facts - like Obama's exact statement.

Either way, it's a non issue. Suddenly Americans are supposed to give a shit that Democrats have an unfair funding advantage. Fuck off you giant babies.

Ok, so I probably should've seen this before I bumped the other thread.

Exactly.

I also think that this issue won't have much traction because I suspect that the average American has a shaky understanding of campaign financing.

What pissed my off about her article was the timing and headline so close to election time when some voters are still skeptical and undecided. I think it is in poor taste plus did not John McCain say he would run a campaign on the issues only? I am really disappointed in her.

The article was written after one of the candidates purchased a half hour of prime time on all of the major networks, something I don't think any candidate has ever done. If she swayed undecideds against your candidate of choice that's not her fault, it's the voters', who apparently are too dumb to base their decisions on real issues.

OMFG, how can he, like, get away with it, all this time and we thought he was running a clean campaign and now this!?!
That's it, there's no way I could ever vote for him now.

Seriously, isn't this really, really, really old news? Bringing it up now is...
Never mind, "October Surprise!"

Pathetic.

Right, it kind of reminds me of someone who starts out a sentence with, "I'm not ________-ist, but..." You already know they're going to say something extremely offensive and stupid. Thats how I feel about Fox News: "Fair & Balanced" or the multitude of Bush's initiatives and policies like the Clear Skies Initiative, No Child Left Behind Act, Clean Water Act, Healthy Forests Restoration Act , Help America Vote Act, etc. They all sound good but you know they're loaded to the gills with shit that's going to go contrary to their noble sounding monikers (I call them trophy names - akin to mounting a kill).

Also: no one cares.

Couldn't say it any better myself. The more you put back into the hands of the common people, the better.

I'm in favor of banning donations from collective entities entirely. Only individuals should be allowed to donate.

Could you explain (or link to an article that explains) why McCain was "forced" into using public financing? I'm a little confused on how he was able to put up public money as collateral...

Like it's Obama's fault that stockula has been doing such an amazing job of fund raising for his campaign. McCain should just STFU and accept that people are throwing money at Obama's campaign because they can't fathom another 4 years of this crap.

I have donated $350 and volunteered hours (registering voters & knocking on doors); In 2004, I did nothing.

If I could afford more, I would donate more.

I don't see a problem. It's the free market applied to the election. I thought republicans loved that shit.

I LOL'ed.