McCain-Feingold

I respect John McCain. He voted against impeachment(conviction) and against the Bush tax cuts. I respect Russ Feingold as well. He votes his conscience and voted against the Patriot Act. But the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law is a joke. (I just realized I hadn't railed against it yet on the blog).

Here's what it does:
Campaign contributions are now limited to $2000 per campaign season. So, $2000 for the primaries and $2000 for the general election. However, individuals can donate as much as they want to political action committees. These committees cannot run ads that directly mention the names of candidates 30 days before an election.

M-F transfers power from the political parties to political action committees.

What's better, powerful PACs or powerful political parties?

M-F creates a system where a diverse group of political action committees can take in money. As a private citizen, I can donate to a center-left group, a center-right group, a far-left group, or a far right group. Or perhaps a non-partisan issue group. In the previous system, when the parties dominated the money, there were only two choices: Democrats or Republicans.

Are these PACs accountable to the citizenry? We cannot elect them, nor can we really regulate them. Most of them are highly centralized. Political parties exist at the grassroots level and often the power resonates from the bottom up. PACs often operate top-down. For example, if George Soros starts a huge PAC using 20 million dollars, he will most likely control the message and focus of that PAC. Political parties must elect delegates/chairspeople/etc.

To sum up: PACs give wealthy citizens an ideologically diverse spectrum of places to donate but little control. The two parties give candidates only two choices (although the primary season often offers several ideological choices...geez...there goes my theory), but more control.

Another problem with M-F: should the government really keep PACs from running ads 30 days before the election? Shouldn't the government be protecting political speech, not suppressing it? I honestly don't understand how the Supreme Court could have upheld this part of M-F.

Harkin endorsement coming?

The word on the street: Tom Harkin plans to endorse Howard Dean soon.

This should add an additional cushion to Dean's large post Gore endorsement lead in Iowa.

Harkin's endorsement spells doom for Gephardt. The Iowa Senator reportedly possesses mountains of voter rolls and enough connections to ensure a blowout win for Dean.

It's crunch time folks. Clark or Dean: take your pick.

update: Woah!!! I can't believe I missed the more relevant numbers in this poll: KERRY IS CATCHING UP WITH GEPHARDT FOR SECOND PLACE IN IOWA.

I now see why the Iowa Political Stock Market now has Dean as a 7-1 favorite over Clark. This field is too fragmented by "anti-Dean" candidates for anyone to take on Dean. The 3 "anti-Deans" - Kerry, Clark, and Gephardt - will all cancel each other out and hand the nomination to Howard Dean.

What a great column

Read William Saletan's latest in Slate.

The key point: Dean is not Clinton.

A Dean move towards the Center

Dean's apologists always contend that his positions lean towards the center. The truth is, to move towards the center, Dean needs to actually offend some of his liberal supporters. He needs to do something outrageous and offensive (like Clinton's attack on Sister Souljah in 1992). He can't just make vaguely moderate policy recommendations. It's probably too late, but he could do it. He could run some strongly pro-gun advertisements in the South. Or he could publicly call for some sort of military action. I don't know. But he needs to do something. Putting little moderate sound bites in one's speeches and platforms does not make one a moderate.

4 more years of Bush

Right now it's looking like 4 more years of Bush. The economy's improving, Iraq is improving, and Bush passed a huge (albeit inconsequential and idiotic) health care initiative. Combine that with the fact that the Democrats are lumbering towards nominating a sure loser (even if Bush was weak) and this has been a pretty depressing week. Furthermore, that sure loser will be brutalized by moderates in the Democratic Party for the next few weeks.

I've been wrestling with myself about something lately: Should I continue to attack Dean? Should anyone in the Democratic Party? Dean locked the nomination up long ago. What's the point? Stubbornness?

Here is the point: I strongly believe that Wesley Clark could not only defeat Bush, but lead this country through the foreign policy challenges that face it in the future. I also don't want to see the party led by the left towards defeat once again.
Look - every time the Democrats nominate a sure loser (Dukakis, McGovern, Mondale), the same loud mouths from the far left step forward and say:

1. He's electable! The whole country is liberal, they just don't know it!
2. We're starting a liberal movement that will become the new majority in the next election (if we happen to lose this one - but we won't, we'll win it!)
3. Who cares! The Democrats and Republicans are selling our country to corporate interests. They're the same party. It's better to vote with one's conscience than strategically.
4. This guy has run a great campaign.

We've done it before! We've wasted an election campaign before - wasted the efforts of tens of thousands of volunteers, wasted millions of dollars, and put a Republican in office all because of these same stubborn liberals.

If Dean were to somehow beat Bush, then I'll eat my words a thousand times. I was actually arguing for it back in the Spring when I was a Dean supporter (and Dean still had time to move to the center without offending many of his supporters. I'll get to this in my next post.)

Bad ad?

Check out the new ad being run by a friend of Gephardt in Iowa.

Judge for yourself.

Favorable polls for Clark

Here are some favorable poll results for Wesley Clark:

In Arizona:

Dean 31
Clark 29
Other 11
Lieberman 10
Gephardt 9
Kerry 7
Undecided 3

In Oklahoma:

Clark 34
Dean 21
Lieberman 11
Other 11
Edwards 8
Gephardt 8
Kerry 4

In South Carolina:

Dean 21
Clark 20
Edwards 15
Sharpton 15
Gephardt 10
Undecided 7
Lieberman 5
Braun 4
Kerry 3
Kucinich 1

These polls are courtesy of SurveyUSA.

Do they really matter? I'm not so sure. Many of these non-Dean supporters will probably hop on the bandwagon after New Hampshire and Iowa. The best Clark can hope for is a Gephardt loss in Iowa because with a win Gephardt could emerge as the second place man.

Dean's sissy foreign policy

William Saletan, who seems to have jumped aboard the Dean bus, is reporting that Dean's foreign policy is not for wimps.

Dean can try as might, but he'll never replace lost foreign policy credibility. He'll always be seen by the general public (who does not watch major policy speeches) as the lefty's lefty.

Capture of Saddam

The newscasts have repeated it for 3 days straight, nearly 24/7. Saddam has been captured.

I am so tired of all of these questions:

"What will the capture of Saddam do to the insurgency?"
"What will the capture of Saddam do to the Democratic Presidential contest?"

I don't really have much to add to the exhaustive coverage except that Dean really seems like a joke now.