I think it’s kind of hilarious that corporate oligarchs have finally figured out that they should stop giving political donations to both parties since both parties suck. Isn’t that sorta what some of us here at the Lake figured out, oh, about six years ago?

Why would you be “delighted that the Dems will have enough funding to get out a message about the Democratic platform[?]” The dim platform seems to be “just follow what the repugs want and everything will be OK.” They have nothing to indicate that voting for them will make anything better for my family or the rest of the nation. As far as I am concerned, obumble tried as hard as he could to bring the repugs back from the edge of the abyss and he succeeded. In fact, he gave them so much resusitation that they have dominated the whole political scene with less than a majority. The dims have no program worth advertising.

What gets me, and I say this as someone who does “Lawyer in the classroom” lectures to HS kids, what we are teaching our kids in their Social Studies classes about how campaign finace is supposed to work, it no longer remotely relevant.

The amount of $ a campaign raises and spends directly has become a tiny fraction of the amount of $ that is spent to influence the outcome of that election.

And it’s not just POTUS. There was a big scandal in NYC with a minor 3rd party getting $1 million from Bloomberg to do “poll monitoring” and the party offical ripped off Mayor Mike and pocketed the $.

I am part of a statewide poll monitoring organization and I can tell you we do not spend a million dollars to poll monitor. Hell in the 6 years been doing it statewide combined, we haven’t spent that much money.

So, what was the million bucks really for?

And since the Citizen’s United SCOTUS decision, you have the prospect of movie studios releasing propaganda films as theatrical releases–with attendant publicity campaigns–timed to influence the outcome of elections.

For those who don’t remember, Citizens United was the name of an advocacy group that got $ together to make an unflattering documentary about Hillary Clinton which they intended to show in theatres to injure her campaign.

$35,800 to eat dinner with the SDOTUS (Surrender Donkey Of The United States) and those happy, giddy little asses in his entourage. What upwards redistribution of wealth?

[?]” The dim platform seems to be “just follow what the repugs want and everything will be OK.”

Actually, that’s not true. The Democratic paltform is a set of positions and policy proposals put togeher by the platform committee and voted for at the conventions.

You can read the 2008 platform here. As you can see, there’s lots of good stuff in there. Candidates running on the Democratic line are supposed to run on those issues and work for them when elected.

The paltform is not the problem, the total lack of adherance to it by the electeds is what’s screwing up the world.

The DNC is not supposed to be using it’s money to directly pay for a candidate (other than a very low $ amount allowed by the FEC, you can see it in the chart I linked to) the money raised by DNC is supposed to go to support the DNC (pay the rent and salaries,convention expenses, etc) and to develop and promote the Dem Platform.

It’s just that the $ amounts are so huge, it’s looking a bit out of proportion wouldn’t you say?

When the campaign says it’s going to raise a $1 Billion, that’s campaign and DNC combined. But the DNC part is not supposed to be at the campaign’s disposal per se.

It’s kinda like Mayor Mike payig $1 million for election monitoring, the dollar amounts don’t make sense.

I could be paranoid and maybe DNC is going the pay extravagant amounts to college kids to do door to door lit drops. Maybe we will have a paid organizer for every 4 block radius neighborhood, or maybe there is way more money than has been traditionally needed for the tasks to be performed.

This is now the 3rd or 4th such dinner just in NYC. He’s been doing these maxed out early donor dinners about once a month here. There are similar dinners held in Chicago and LA, IDK if other places as well

a commenter just posted this insightful observation over at “they gave us a republic

A guy with the slightest of political experience somehow gets the backing and money to run first for US Senator and the TWO years later for President? Come on, man. How do you think that happened exactly?

let me add to that profound point

“A guy with the slightest of political experience somehow gets the backing and money to run AND WIN first for US Senator and the TWO years later for President? Come on, man. How do you think that happened exactly?”

MAN, right before our noses we finally find what was apparent from the very beginning

Wow, finally a jobs program.

Actually have watched the very hard work put into forming the dem. platform, and it’s very much oriented to public interests, worth watching on CSpan if you want to see what goes into it.

I have been really disturbed to see a change in personnel in our local courthouse, putting out the old line who were okay, not spectacular, to replace them with wingnuts. Now observers are not allowed in to watch the vote counted. It’s really rank.

the platform and the policy once elected are sadly, two different things

for instance, look at obama’s agenda vs his election policy

How do I think that happened? I think the guy –when he was still a state senator–gave a rock star performance at the 2004 convention and then walked fromt he podium to the backstage and immeditalty, w/o so much as a chance to take a deep breath, began an interview with Gwen Iffel in which he was so calm, so collected, so suave and showed zero signs of adrenaline rush that the ENTIRE political class had a collective jaw drop.

Obama was the star of that convention, not Kerry. And money and help just gushed out at him from that point forward. Hewas an overnight superstar. And he kept turning out rock star perfoermances on the campaign trail

Owe you a drink! My version was, they obviously know nobody is gonna volunteer to work for them for free.

You just made me laugh

He’s not a rock star anymore, he’s a major pain in my ass.

How much real political experience did the last pres have?

And Perris, the fact that someone runs on that platform–which Obama certainly did, there are oodles of clips floating around where he said the things we wanted to hear during the campaign–and then do the opposite once in office, not just the President, but our Congresscritters too, is why 1) the conutry is such a mess, 2) POTUS’s re-election is not looking like the slam dunk it ought to given his ridiculus fundraising advantage.

Because he said one thing and did another.

But the question was “how did he go from being an unknown to being able to raise soooo much $ and recruit so much campaign talent”, and the answer is not at all suspicious in an American Idol culture of overnight fame.

Let’s face it, if experience/resume were how we picked our leaders, President Hillary would be running for re-election right now.

I didn’t make it clear enough: for whatever the dims write in their “platform,” the real platform is, as I said, “just follow what the repugs want and everything will be OK.” The written stuff is just designed to provide a cover, but they have no intention of really delivering; they are too indebted to the big corpses.

POTUS’s re-election is not looking like the slam dunk it ought to given his ridiculus fundraising advantage.

the worst thing for us is a republic elected as a democrat, we really need obama to lose if we are to save what’s left to save time for fixing the political system

Also, look what they were rejecting. The choice of the Old Guard had just finished making hash of our total economy, with a few wars we were lied into, on the side.

That is true, and not the first time that this has happened.

We’re gonna vote him off the island, he knows it, so he’s desperately building his preznit library fund a year early.

Actually, I’m going to disagree with you. The Platform is actually a pretty grass roots driven item. Have you ever been to a political convention? It’s the time when active party members have a chance to be heard.

This platform gets voted on by the people who carry petitions, do phone banking, walk lit drops, go to train platforms at 6 AM to do real grass roots campaigning. The platform is a product of the the real members of the party, not just the super donors.

It’s the fact that the super donors essentially can bribe the condidate to ignore the will of the party that we should focus on.

Rank and file dems want what we want. They field candiates who claim to want the same thing. Those candidates get bought by superdonors.

THAT is the walnut we need to crack

Campaign finance is now big money. There must be MBA programmes now in running campaigns and handling the finance. It is all business all the time. The scum runs to the money. Why run for office when you can do better simply by handling the cash that elects the sucker?

Very true, but she attracted scum to her campaign like flies to cowshit. Remember Lanny Davis?

I’m in a very small town in a way that has largely disappeared in many parts of our country. My state assembly representative is a local phone call to his home phone and his wife will take a message if he is downstate. The same 7-9 women, a very serious civic responsibility volunteer group has (wo)manned the election tables as long as I have been voting (they must resurrect a couple of them just for election day). The opposition candidates have time to listen at the post office when I get my mail. Problems matter, parties not so much. Neighbors will ask about you in a good way, because they are concerned. Opportunities are limited and people ask me why I have stayed here. Maybe we’re only a living history museum attraction of what this country used to be. Rain has ended, I’ve been sitting here too long. A nice weekend for you all.

We’re now a fully owned subsidiary of Big Oil. I love what you have.

IDK about MBA programs, but there have been campaign schools for at least a decade now

It sounds like you live in Glen Cove, here on beautiful Long Island!

That’s how our local muncipal gov’t is. My County legislator lives down the sreet from me, my state assemblyman 3 blocks away. I run in to the mayor at when he’s grocery shopping in the supermarket.

But these are all small $ campaigns, where the # of volunteers you have and your own door to door work is the deciding factor.

If we brought back the Fairness Doctrine and stripped a lot of the $ out of elections…? IDK.

But I do agree with you, small local elections can still be about the voters

cynthia, I live about 10 minutes from you, care to meet for coffee at the star bucks?

I’ll see your Lanny Davis and raise you one Mark Penn.

you are a lawnguylander?

I am lawn guy man!

I play tennis at eisenhower park every single day too!

how to get in touch?

we can have a firedog lake gathering for whoever lives around here!

As someone who has been involved in grassroots party politics, I can affirm that the platform comes from “the little people.” Our state party platform, which goes to the national, is full of all the most progressive stuff ever.

The problem is that now the Party is not the “go to” for campaign cash like in days of old. The Party (meaning the little people) has zero influence b/c campaigns have to raise massive amounts of their own cash. In the primary, the Party is not supposed to favor one candidate over another, so local Party Officials and cash stay out at that level (for the most part). That is not to say that the people who call us “fucking retards” don’t put their hands all over the scale at any level in an effort to get “their people” elected up through the process.

I was reading in TIMe this week (for some reason it is delivered w/o subscription to my deceased father), and there is a big article on the T party. Half the stuff they believe is the same stuff we believe/know as far as the corruption of the process, or so the article claims. No wonder there are so many people who are behind them. But they just go half the distance with their analysis.

Thanks, Cynthia. I need to go back through the archives for your stuff this week as I did not have a chance to be on line this week.

allows voters to know who is controlling the messaging beamed into their living rooms.” ???

sigh

I doubt that the voters will do anything other than ignore all politics until 6 weeks before the election, and then vote their personal traditional way with a slight variation based on ads and the GOP controlled media narrative.

London riots got general public attention and a government response – Colbert is fun – but not that attention getting for the general public.

Yet kept calling it all that small donation/grassroots money….lies even then, Im very sorry to say.

I guess that we are in total disagreement on the definition of “platform.” I don’t care what is written and how much work goes into the writing: what is actually proposed and voted on, when such happens, is the real platform. The words of the platform thrown out for show can be strong and uplifting, but what we get is what the corpses want and show no relation to what was written up after so much work. If you are a dyed-in-the-wool dim, then you will defend the platform as meaningful. If you are like me and stand apart, you can see the dichotomy between the “leadership” platform that gets passed, and the “platform” written by the rank and file to keep them charged up. The written platform is meaningless to the leadership of the dims.

If I give 25 bucks to the DNC, do I get a seat at the table?

I don’t understand Colbert’s ads. They make no sense to me at all. And I wonder if they do to the people of Iowa. To me, it looks like a huge waste of effort and donors’ contributions. I’m frustrated and disappointed because I had expected that he’d reach out to voters in a way that makes sense. Is there any indication of how Iowans are responding to his ads?

Recommended.

Speaking of transparency … I’ve been to two more recent events for which funds were raised to put them on. At the conclusion of each the entire accounting was reviewed at the podium showing all incomes and outflows! Folks in the US are so acculturated to hidden money and hidden processes around money that they don’t even blink an eye. Past time to change that.