A Sad, Cruel Irony If McCain Loses A Close Election — McCain-Feingold And Obama’s Buying Of The Presidency
Posted by WLS:
I’ll have more on this next week when the Obama campaign submits its campaign fundraising report to the FEC for September.
But if John McCain loses a close election to Obama, he’s going to spend some long evenings watching the Arizona sunset while thinking about how his bipartisanship in helping the Dems pass campaign finance reform in the Senate was returned by them. He’ll have to think about Russ Feingold cheering Obama on while he literally buys his way to the Presidency.
What I think we are going to discover in the aftermath of this election is that, by virtue of having opted out of the public financing system, Obama not only unshackled his campaign from the limit of spending only $84 million in this race but he also detached his campaign from the visceral obligation to spend no more than you can raise during the campaign.
Facts are coming into focus to show that the Obama campaign is likely spending vast sums of money in excess of any amount they hope to raise before election day — in essence they are running this campaign on a huge credit card. They are counting on the fact that a victory means they will possess the continuing fundraising clout as a President-elect to raise more than enough money to pay the campaign’s debts after the election from people who hope to have influence with the new administration.
The fact is that Obama started September 1 with $77 million in the bank. The most he raised in any one month at any point in the entire 2008 election cycle was $65 million. Even if you were to assume that he can raise $100 million a month in September and October, that would give him only $277 million to spend.
But we know from anecdotal reporting that he’s spending far more than that. Obama’s campaign apparatus is vastly bigger than McCain’s, Bush ’04 or Kerry ’04. That means more hard expenses like paid staff, offices and equipment, travel and lodging, etc. Obama himself, in touting the “executive experience” he was getting from running the campaign, pegged their operational expenses at $2 million a day back in August. It’s got to be significantly higher than that now.
Add to that the advertising expenses they are incurring at an unprecedented rate. A Politico story earlier this week said Obama was spending $3.5 million a day on advertising in late September and early October. That’s about $25 million a week or $100 million a month.
But yesterday Karl Rove in a WSJ article pegs Obama’s current advertising expense at $35 million a week.
There is no way they are paying for this ad time as they go — they are taking it on account, giving them 30 or 60 days to pay for it.
If their ad spending was $100 million in September and is now $140 million for October, along with the hard campaign costs of at least $60 million a month to run the apparatus — well, the math doesn’t add up. That alone would be $360 million between September 1 and the election.
As reported by David Fredosso in his book “The Case Against Barack Obama”, the lesson Obama took away from his first run for office — where he won by having all his competitors disqualified from the ballot — was the following:
“If you can win, you should win.”
When the numbers are all in and tallied, if Obama wins, we are going to find that he will have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000,000 between the primary and general campaigns in order to buy himself and the Democrat party the White House.
Hopefully McCain can get past calling Russ Feingold “My Good Friend”.
I heard Hillary was first in line to be repaid…
pdbuttons (359493) — 10/17/2008 @ 2:38 pmNOT!
Yeah, but what does any of this have to do with McCain/ Feingold? If anything, McF has made the imbalance LESS, since it increased the individual limit to $2,300 a person (it used to be only $1,000) and Obama collects a higher percentage of his campaign funds from smaller donors.
Sean P (e57269) — 10/17/2008 @ 2:40 pmCampaign Finance reform is meant to reduce the influence of moneyed interests in politics.
And if you think Obama collects a larger percentage of campaign funds from smaller donors because his campaign says so, well there’s this bridge in Brooklyn ….
WLS (26b1e5) — 10/17/2008 @ 2:43 pm$750m!
Well, when you have a potentially unlimited pocketbook (the Budget) to pay back “investors” with, I guess $750M isn’t such a daunting number after all.
I hope everyone who has criticized the amount of money in political campaigns in the past, chokes on their own bile.
Another Drew (7894e6) — 10/17/2008 @ 2:56 pmJust goes to show that the more the govt. tries to micromanage the more things get messed up.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 10/17/2008 @ 3:04 pmjust like the’bailout’
pdbuttons (359493) — 10/17/2008 @ 3:05 pmI’m voting Against ANY incumbent-
and 4 Palin
I could NOT believe this decision!
along w/immigration/prescription drugs/
dems/rep/indi/liberts/ u got my vote!
all of em-OUT!
That’s the story of the Finance melt-down.
Another Drew (7894e6) — 10/17/2008 @ 3:06 pmThe more they involve themselves into a solution, the worse the problem gets.
1. That is a very scary situation. Among other things, it means that any media/news/entertainment company (e.g., FOX, NBC, ABC) which gives the Obama campaign credit would have a vested interest in the outcome.
Ira (28a423) — 10/17/2008 @ 3:09 pm2. What does happen to the debts if a candidate cannot (or simply does not) continue to raise funds?
I guess we can kiss good-bye Obama’s pledge to restore fiscal discipline:
DRJ (c953ab) — 10/17/2008 @ 3:48 pmand Obama collects a higher percentage of his campaign funds from smaller donors.
Um, no; as it turns out, Obama’s donors might give small amounts in each instance, but they give them on multiple occasions.
Perhaps that’s how The One plans to pay for everything — more illegal donations from fictitious individuals.
North Dallas Thirty (efe6ff) — 10/17/2008 @ 4:00 pm“When the numbers are all in and tallied, if Obama wins, we are going to find that he will have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000,000 between the primary and general campaigns in order to buy himself and the Democrat party the White House.”
Looks like letting people give to him was a good idea.
imdw (c990d8) — 10/17/2008 @ 4:42 pmObama is going to lose. Big. The narrative, given by his lapdogs in the media and the phony-baloney polls, that he has a real chance, will only cause horrendous social unrest once the election results are in. I suspect that is their intent.
nk (f2ee58) — 10/17/2008 @ 4:51 pmThat certainly would mirror their last perfomance in the Presidential election – they all but called it for Kerry right out of the box, only to have to backtrack furiously hours later. That definitely played into the “disenfranchised voter” crapola we had to hear about for the next four years – again.
Dmac (cc81d9) — 10/17/2008 @ 4:57 pmYeah, especially not checking too deeply into the small donations from overseas and from people with names like “qxlrnglx”.
Rob Crawford (b5d1c2) — 10/17/2008 @ 5:05 pmAn upside to an Obama presidency: the lying POS just doesn’t stop. Twisting answers and canceling promises, always to fit the crowd or audience… he’s so arrogant that this will trip him up.
The media covers for him, now. (I mean per Soros and the filth calling the shots out of Chicago. Their foreign money bundlers are pretty damn obvious now.)
Many people believe the government ‘owes’ them. To suffer any repercussions in ’09 or ’10 from the hope and change nonsense… you bet the dummies voting for him are going to want his ass. His arrogance is hardly going to disappear should he successfully burglarize the Oval Office and get his nameplate on the wall. But give the Bots what they want for about 4 years. Could be delicious and ironic.
Vermont Neighbor (c91cfe) — 10/17/2008 @ 5:14 pmI cant submit to stumbleupon, 404 error message from stumbleupon….wierd.
QuickRob (63f0fe) — 10/17/2008 @ 6:47 pmI hope that Fox got cash in advance for the half hour address Obama has booked, before Game 6…
If he’s really spending at least $100,000,000.00 more than he has, and has tons of illegal contributions to hide…
… I’d guess a couple of the stations are going to conveniently forget to send him the bill, if they want to keep their FCC licenses.
Clint (e32e9a) — 10/17/2008 @ 7:04 pmnk,
I agree. They want to discourage the Reps from voting and will encourage unrest if Obama loses. If Obama loses, though, I think he will become even more of a cult figure, and he will pay off his debt in no time.
Unless the campaign lets him talk to the media or to plumbers unscripted.
Patricia (ee5c9d) — 10/18/2008 @ 7:14 pmHopefully my comment will post this time…
re WLS (#3) This post is about McCain Feingold specifically, not campaign finance reform in general. The hard money limit of $1000 per person was implemented in 1975, well before McCain began his congressional career, and he had nothing to do with its passage. Same goes for the spending limits rules for candidates who accepted matching funds in the primaries and general election. This rule was around since 1975.
So, again, what role does McCain Feingold have in McCain’s spending predicament.
Sean P (4e644b) — 10/19/2008 @ 12:14 amHey, WLS – I knew this theory was BS, wish I’d gotten myself on record earlier – Obama raised $150 million in September.
Turns out back-of-the envelope assumptions about things like revenue and expenses of the Obama campaign, about which you really don’t have much info, aren’t reliable methods of coming to conclusions, huh?
So, since you’re not the kind of blogger that likes to intentionally deceive his auidence, stoke the paranoia, etc, I imagine you’ll be updating with something to the effect of “I suppose another possibility besides “Obama is racking up huge campaign debts despite no evidence of that appearing”, is that the man was raising more money than I expected”.
Meanwhile, as for this BS talking point about Obama donors, I give you Marc Ambinder:
Barack Obama’s getting lots of heat for what appear to be hundreds of clearly false small dollar donations reported by his campaign and for not disclosing all of its donors. (Federal law requires disclosure only of donations — cumulatively or singly — of more than $200).
Well, someone with way too much time on their hands was looking through McCain’s primary donor database and discovered entires like:
Anonymous, Anonymous Anonymous XX 99999 $10.00 3/6/2007
Try it yourself.
There are also many obviously fraudulent zip codes — 99999 is one — and donors from other countries…like China.
The point isn’t that McCain is violating election law… it’s that, with hundreds of thousands of donors, compliance is just really not that easy. That foes for McCain…but especially for Obama and his millions of donors. Both campaigns have full-time compliance staffs….but it’s tough for ten people to pour through millions of donors….
The point here is that it’s actually quite challenging to investigate tens or hundreds of thousands or internet donations every month during a pres campaign; not that both McCain and Obama are tools of evil foreign donors.
glasnost (c75a98) — 10/19/2008 @ 5:29 amI notice a lack of stories in the press about candidates buying their office. I wonder why /s
Mark (4d8289) — 10/19/2008 @ 8:09 amImagine if Republicans had raised the same amount of contributions (600 million or more) from donors such as poiut rewq or mickey mouse or goodwill hunting? Imagine if some Taiwanese or Columbians(non Americans)had contributed to McCain’s campaign like the pfakistinians did, their lawyers would be calling for a special prosecutor even now. Imagine the outrage. Wll you have to imagine the outrage against the Obamanation’s campaign because the liberal media is mum on outrage and even seems to be applauding Obama for finding nearly one hundred eighty million dollars for September. Is George Soros and Warren Buffet and Iranians and Venezuelans going into high gear for the next two months? Sure seems like it.
eaglewingz08 (013c81) — 10/19/2008 @ 9:10 am