Democrats & Liberals: Archives

The people who care about this issue need to pay very close attention to the claims that the current voting process has the potential to be maniupulated an controlled by certain people in positions of power.

The same issue is at hand should a large percentage of voting process move from voting
machines to Internet-based voting. If there are claims now that the voting machine counts are being manipulated then there will certainly be claims in the future that Internet-voting is being controlled and mianipulated due to its foreign and technical nature to so many people.

“…the political rule is that you raise as much money as you can and spend it on TV commercials. No Democrat can compete under those rules.”

They seem to do pretty well in California and New York, the two states where media and money are most important.

Am I missing something?

The issue really seems to be the disproportionate amount of money Bush can raise when compared to the other candidates. This is because Bush has a larger number of extremely wealthy donors who are willing to pay for $2000 for a plate of food. The Democratic candidates can also do this but have a much smaller group of wealthy patrons to draw campaign donations from.

There really should be a cap put on how much money candidates are allowed to raise from private donors. How such a law would be regulated and enforced is beyond my grasp, but it would likely fail due to the adept financial accountants most wealthy people have at their disposal.

Another issue seems to be the effectiveness of television advertising. One can only imagine the creative ways candidates would reach out to the voters should TV advertising be banned. Actually, that’s not such a bad idea: restrict television appearances to debates only, and then require that 50% of all private donations to campaign funds be used for things better and more effective than TV advertising. Instead of the TV networks getting millions of dollars for advertising, that money would go towards town hall meetings, rallies, and bringing the people out of their homes to actually meet and speak with the candidates.

The ink is barely dry on McCain-Feingold, and already you want to tear it up?

Dear me.

Historically, Republicans have raised most of their money from individuals, while Democrats got most of theirs from PACs, corporations, and unions. McCain-Feingold says that pols have to raise money from people, not organizations, and this really shouldn’t be a problem for any party that actually represents real people. If Bush succeeds in raising $200 Million, that’s only about 75 cents per American, and any grass-roots fundraising campaign should be able to do at least that well - if the Dems can raise $5 from each of registered Dem voter, they would be way above the Bush goal.

That’s why Dems wrote McCain-Feingold, voted for it, and bragged about passing it. So you make your bed, and then you sleep in it.

And incidentally, the “Extremely Wealthy” tend to support Democrats, while the Republican Party depends on the middle-middle-class. The tie between Reeps and the ultra-rich is simply a popular misconception.

Richard, this is an area that I don’t know much about so I may be wrong. Could you provide some clarification and links to back up your statement that the Republican Party depends on middle-class for their campaign donations? I know of very few familes that can afford $2000-a-plate for hamburgers and soda.

I agree.

Some recent comments in both the Dem and Repub blogs seem to be nose diving into rhetoric, hearsay and the such. I would like to read (and possibly engage in) intelligent conversation and lively debate between those with opposing views, not lunch counter talk.

How about we put some facts behind our comments? The advantage of this being an online discussion is that we can easily link to articles and other material to support our claims.

The money in politics is chicken feed on the national scale. Less than ten dollars each, every fourth year. TV revolutionized politics by being so cheap per eyeball-minute.

Being able to afford a $2000 donation doesn’t mean someone is ultra-rich, only rich. I think the Dems are ahead among the very richest few, while the Republicans are ahead among the thousands who are merely fabulously wealthy.

To make the internet revolutionize politics, Let’s get intermodal.

Ryan has hit the nail on the head? Is this going to be a forum for real debate? Or is just going to be spin-doctoring on both sides?

I get all the spin I want from TV. I want legitimate debate about the issues that matter. If we can’t get that here, I’ll just move on.

Look, guys, there’s a basic level of literacy that you have to come to on your own before you can engage in meaningful discussions about politics, so don’t just sit there demanding I provide you with basic information that you’re too lazy to look up.

The demographics of party affiliation comes under this heading, but just because I’m feeling generous I’ll provide you with a starter link: CNN Exit Polls from the 2000 Election

Vote by Class Gore Bush
Upper Class 56 % 39 %
Upper-Middle 43 % 54 %
Middle Class 48 % 49 %
Working Class 51 % 46 %
Lower Class % 0 % 0 %

Regular User of Internet Gore Bush
Yes 47 % 49 %
No 51 % 46 %

Vote by Education Gore Bush
No H.S. Degree 59 % 39
High School Graduate 48 % 49 %
Some College 45 % 51 %
College Graduate 45 % 51 %
Post-Graduate Degree 52 % 44 %

To summarize, Democrats get high-school dropouts and Masters degree holders, the working class, the upper class, and people who don’t use the Internet. Republicans get middle-class people with Bachelors degrees who use the Internet.

You can see the same patterns among holders of elected office: the filthy rich with inherited wealth (Kennedys, Rockefellers, Heinz-Kerrys, Corzines, and Feinsteins) are Dems; people who made their own money are Republicans.

But really and truly, the money in politics is peanuts, like $1/yr. assuming lots of people in each party give a little. The question we should be asking is why so few people have enough confidence in the system to even do that.

Richard, thank you for that link and the information. It matches what I had assumed and what I could recall from the 2000 election.

The question we should be asking ourselves is if these percentages are going to hold for the 2004 election. There are many more people using the Internet now than there were in 2000, from every income class.

The issues that will decide the 2004 election have not really emerged yet, but I think we can assume that some of the major ones will be:

- lying or not lying about WMD in Iraq
- national health care
- health of the economy
- foreign relations and foreign policy

One of the reasosn sites like WatchBlog exist is to inform the reading public of alternative perspectives and points of view. Providing an equal platform for discussion for all sides is the primary goal. I can only hope that Google continues to send us traffic (currently about 50-100 search results a day from Google).

I believe that people are starting to feel that our political system is failing them, and are increasingly ignoring politics because they do not know what or who to believe. I was like this a few years ago and didn’t care about voting, didn’t care that politicians were lying, and didn’t care about politics in any form. I increasingly see this attitude in the people around me, especially when I go back to the Midwest to see my family. I’m not sure what to do about it, though I guess creating WatchBlog is a good start.

Cam, the demographic patterns are pretty persistent from one election to the next, so I wouldn’t expect a great deal of change except in those categories, like women, who exhibit a lot of favor for incumbency. Democrats have also hurt themselves with Hispanics on the Estrada nomination, but it remains to be seen how well the Reeps can keep that issue alive for another year.

Reeps have taken national health off the table by passing prescription drugs, and this isn’t an issue that gets people excited anyhow. The Supreme Court has also taken gay rights off the table, so that’s not going to get too many soccer moms excited. So I figure the issues in the election are going to be national security in the large sense (not how many WMD parts Saddam had and where they are now) and the economy.

The economy is the weaker issue, as most people realize it’s not driven by government policy as much as it is by global business cycles, tech, and innovation, so that leaves national defense as number one. The Dem who’s playing that issue the smartest, as I see it, is Graham, but his position (that Iraq was a distraction from the hunt for Osama) may be too nuanced to play well in the primary.

But we’ll see how it plays out; some single-issue constituency will probably influence the primary a great deal, but it’s the broad coalitions that win in November.

I demand that Mr Bennett provide a single shred of evidence besides his own spin that ANY Democratic candidates are “pro Saddam” or spoken of him in a positive manner.

We know that Bush Sr. and Rummy supported Saddam during their first stint in office, so I assume that makes them “pro Saddam”. I fail to understand how being against the war in Iraq or “anti-Bush” make any candidate or any citizen “pro Saddam”?

This is just Mr Bennett’s lame attempt to divert the discussion and drag it into the gutter. If he can’t convince anyone with the facts, he must smear those who disagree with him. It’so typical of extreme right wingers to distort the facts and attempt to prove the converse by circular logic.

This juvenile debate tactic is so transparent and typical of right wing extremists who are more interested in generating heat than factually supporting their own weak positions.

Thanks for the info. Richard, but it doesn’t say anything about where the Dems or the Repubs got their money. I have voted Dem on the last three presidential elections, and I have never given them a dime.

As for asking me not to be lazy… I am going to remember that the next time I write a paper. Instead of a Reference list and citations, I am going just put in a note: Don’t be lazy, look it up yourself. :-)

The money in politics, while it may seem small to some, is not peanuts. If GWB raises the money he plans on, he will be spending 10 times the amount my household income everyday up until the election, on average. Further, in US political campaigns, the money spent is a great indicator of who wins: 94% of the time, the bigger spender wins.

So Dean has his work cut out for him. But he is not unelectable. Dean is Centrist. The US public is Centrist. It could happen.

“…Don’t be lazy, look it up yourself. :-)”

I have the copyright on that riff, but you’re entitled to use it anywhere you see sit. I can tell you it doesn’t go over on term papers all that well, for some unknown reason.

“It could happen.”

Governors of obscure little states have been known to do well against incumbent Bushes, so, yeah, I suppose it could. Dean seems like a bit of a troll, however, and that probably doesn’t play well in a national election. At this stage he reminds me of McCain in the last election - much admired by the media for on off-the-cuff, candid style of speaking, but ultimately got himself in trouble with the core constituency by saying too many things that were either contradictory or hard to explain.

Dean’s best known for being in favor of gay marriage and opposed to the war on Sadddam, and neither of those is a mainstream position. Fiscal conservatism has a definite following, so that works to his advantage, but he’s clearly waffling on gun control now, NRA card or not.

I just hope this doesn’t turn into an election about Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court appointments, just because that’s such a boring and divisive issue.

I have real issue with several of Richard’s statements but one that I can’t leave alone without challenging. In my opinion, Mc-Fein was never really about people vs. organization. It was about incumbent vs. challenger. Which is why I hope the Supreme Court will rule it’s unconstitutional - in toto as they say.

Because cherrypicking this one - keeping the ban on soft money while lifting the restriction on advertising - will make things worse than they are now. If thrown out, the Congressional big boys can say they’ve tried to right what’s wrong with the system but that darn judicial branch just keeps getting in the way.

For some facts on historical campaign spending, several sites are a goldmine of information:OpenSecrets.org, Cato Insitute, FEC, Brookings and last but certainly not least Common Cause.

BTW, Ryan and Timothy - I couldn’t agree with you more.

Richard,

It’s a blog. Post links to back up your information. If you want to ponitificate w/o links, just go be a pundit, not a blogger.

Robbie D

Cam makes a great point. The only way an electronic election can be honest is if it can be audited, meaning there is a physical artifact that can be collected, twice, and verified.

Our election was stolen by Republican dirty tricks in 2000, but our democracy is being systematically stolen today by simply changing the technology of the voting machines into something they can manipulate without being caught.