Despite what you may hear from some quarters, this is an excellent move by Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama:
On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that he would take up Mr. Obama on a proposal for an accord between the two major party nominees to rely just on public financing for the general election.
Such a pact would eliminate any financial edge one candidate might have and limit each campaign to $85 million for the general election. The two candidates would have to return any private donations that they had raised for that period.
Mr. Obama laid out his proposal last month to the Federal Election Commission, seeking an opinion on its legality. The commissioners formally approved it on Thursday.
Jerome Armstrong of MyDD feels differently, writing, "This move is dumb," and "Obama just gave away a probable advantage Democrats would have in the general election." He also claims that by doing this "[Obama] proves that he doesn't understand the power of the progressive netroots movement."
In a push poll at the end of his post Armstrong writes the statement (he doesn't even bother to post it as a question), "Public financing of campaigns is a form of political consultant welfare." (Campaign money mostly ends up going to television ads, as I understand. But demonizing "political consultants" is in vogue amongst the online left these days.) This criticism of public financing of elections, in favor of a system that requires politicians to constantly be raising money and cozying up to the well-heeled, is a very odd argument for a progressive to be making.
Furthermore, I have no clue why Armstrong thinks Obama is giving up an advantage--that Democrats could suddenly raise more money during the Presidential general election than could Republicans. Or is that the "power of the progressive netroots movement" that he mentions? Could he really be that delusional?
Perhaps so. He also writes, "[Obama's campaign] just threw away any potential at a 50 state general campaign and embraced a battleground strategy." Except there never was any potential for a "50 state strategy" in the Presidential election. Until the electoral college is eliminated, any Presidential candidate would have to be monumentally stupid not to run a strategy focusing on "battleground" states, whatever the polls suggest those may be. Does Armstrong really want the Democratic nominee spending resources in Utah and Mississippi in 2008 that could otherwise be spent in Ohio and Florida? 50 state strategies are for congressional campaigns, not Presidential ones. That's just a fact of life with the electoral college.
Obama is making the right move, standing up for the preservation of our three-decade-old system of public financing for Presidential elections. Ideally, we would have a similar system for congressional elections as well. For now, though, this is all we've got, and Obama is taking the lead on making sure it doesn't collapse. For that, Obama deserves words of encouragement, not ill-considered attacks.
UPDATE (3:46 PM): Armstrong has added a post-script clarifying his remarks. His clarification is welcome, as it is far more thoughtful than the original post, if still just as odd and mistaken.
I think that Obama would be foolish to take public financing if his general election opponent did not. If both agree to take public financing, that is less time he needs to spend raising money, and more time that he can spend campaigning.
Posted by: John | March 03, 2007 at 06:33 PM