It’s all about the Benjamins:
Sen. Barack Obama’s decision to forgo public financing for his presidential campaign clears the way for him to outspend Sen. John McCain by 3-to-1 or substantially more in the general election, a financial edge that dramatically rewrites the playbooks for both candidates.
With the possibility of spending perhaps $500 million just in the final two months of the campaign, Obama will be the first major-party candidate to enjoy a spending edge in the general election in more than 30 years. The comparison with the consistently cash-strapped McCain campaign could hardly be more stark.
“It’ll be like George Steinbrenner’s Yankees in the ’90s an All-Star at every position against the ’90s Kansas City Royals, barely able to meet their payroll,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
Though Obama risks a short-term political backlash by seeming to go back on his word, Democratic and Republican strategists say most campaigns would take such a hit in exchange for the unprecedented cash advantage he’ll derive.
What this amount of money would mean, of course, is that Obama would be able to challenge McCain virtually anywhere he wanted — meaning places like Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi — without significantly risking the ability to remain competitive in crucial states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. Even if he doesn’t win those states, the fact that he would be posing a threat there would mean that McCain’s campaign will be forced to spend money to protect states that, otherwise, might be considered “safe.”
It is, quite honestly, an incredibly smart political move on Obama’s part, and one that has likely increased the odds that he will in fact win in November.
Which just makes McCain’s position all the more inexplicable and, in the end, most likely suicidal:
McCain said Thursday he will accept public financing, meaning he’ll be limited to spending only $84.1 million in the critical window between the Republican National Convention and Election Day. He’ll be forced to lean more heavily on the Republican National Committee and outside groups that he cannot legally coordinate spending decisions with.
It’s true that money isn’t everything in politics, but it is one of the most important things, and with a virtually unlimited ability to raise as much money as he needs between now and the General Election, Barack Obama is going to make life even more difficult for John McCain than seemed possible a week ago.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
WHAT!!!??? I thought Republicans were the party of greed and massive amounts of money to fuel their propaganda machine…
June 20th, 2008 at 2:53 am
McCain’s actions aren’t inexplicable Doug. He can’t raise anymore than that amount and he knows it. Obama is the magic money machine right now.
The tragedy is that no one mentions the fact that a Republican is accepting federal financing of his lackluster campaign and a Liberal leftist Democrat is rejecting federal dependence. Who is the slave here? The black or white candidate?
And, no one mentions the fact that this federal financing ought not to exist at all.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
John McCain is currently breaking campaign finance law and has been for months according to the Republican head of the FEC.
Today MoveOn.org announced it’s shutting down it’s 527 operation against McCain in response to Obama’s request. McCain won’t even try to discourage such Republican third party operations.
The only promise Obama made was to try to work out a deal with the Republican nominee for them both to stick to public financing and rein in outside groups. McCain refused to negotiate in any meaningful way with Obama on public financing.
Republicans can complain all they want but McCain is breaking the law and his campaign wouldn’t have survived 2007 if he hadn’t gamed the system. If he wants to compete he should get millions of people to give him $25 donations as Obama has. He can’t so he tries to make a big deal out of this.
Oh and that $3 dollar check off on your tax return for public financing of presidential elections? It’s your own personal earmark. John McCain hates earmarks.