Wednesday, April 18, 2007
And The Winner in the 2008 Presidential Election Is...
Corporations and wealthy donors.
Over the past couple of election cycles, the movement has been towards private- and away from public-goods, and private-goods will be highlighted during this next election cycle (the first to break the $1 billion mark for campaign spending by the two major candidates). What indicators support this proposition?
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Over the past couple of election cycles, the movement has been towards private- and away from public-goods, and private-goods will be highlighted during this next election cycle (the first to break the $1 billion mark for campaign spending by the two major candidates). What indicators support this proposition?
- The money raised thus far by candidates in both of the major parties is staggering. The top three Democrats have raised a total of nearly $66 million while the top three Republicans have raised a total of nearly $51 million. And top fundraiser Hillary Clinton has collected $19 million of her $26 million from people giving the max of $2300 for the primary cycle. What the staggering amount of money raised so far means is that the viable candidates--and indeed the nominees--will opt out of the public financing program that has been in place for thirty years. In fact, since the 2000 election the formula for winning the nomination and then the presidency is to not stay a part of that system. Given that acceptance to stay in the system means limitations on the money that one can raise and spend, there is no electoral incentive to be a part of it. And as the candidates bypass public financing, the inequities between haves and have nots grow stark and the impact of wealthy contributors is accentuated.
- One of the great cornerstones of American democracy is the presidential debates, and yet the ability for any American to actually attend a debate, not to mention for any small to medium sized city to host a debate grows remote. The "bipartisan" Commission on Presidential Debates announced the list of applicants to host either one of the three presidential debates or the one vice-presidential debate to be held in 2008. One of the applicants--tiny Centre College in Danville, Kentucky hosted the VP debate in 2000, and is often a beacon used by the CPD to demonstrate that size doesn't matter--even the tiny and remote can win. Some win. A look at the application process demonstrates that winning a debate is akin to a country winning the bid to host an Olympic. The applicant has to drop $7k as part of the application "fee." If you win, the host site has to set aside a "minimum of 70 hotel rooms"--and not in the cheapies--but those approved by the CPD. Of the 70, "10 should be suites" and paid for by the host site. The host site needs "1,300 individual dial tone lines" to be trunked into the site along with high speed Internet access throughout the site. And the host needs to "guarantee complete city services, including police, fire, bomb disposal, and rescue personnel, and catering "for the CPD staff and crew beginning four days prior to the debate until the day after the debate." Oh, it gets better. "Each debate host will pay $1.35 million to the CPD to cover the production costs of a single debate." So for most cities--even large sized cities--but particularly the small and medium sized cities--it means that these administrative costs come not from the public treasure but by private donors. In return, the private donors get access to the building by way of scarce tickets that are distributed by the host site and access to the candidates and their staff. For you and I, John and Jane Q. Public? We watch the debates on TV (so they may as well be a thousand miles away) and we pray that we don't get robbed, since all the police are pledged to the debate site to protect the CPD.
- And finally the worthless conventions, which the two major Parties go through ritualistically but have no practical importance, other than to bring together the wealthy donors and corporations and political officials from the Presidential nominee down to the lowly Congressperson. Despite the fact that we know who the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are before the conventions are even held, the political parties hold them anyway. And in 2008, the parties scheduled their conventions to give the nominee maximum time to raise a lot of money before the general election campaign takes off and to limit the down time between the time the convention ends and the start of the general campaign. In 1988, after the Democrats held their Convention, nominee Michael Dukakis took a week-long vacation before coming back for the rough and tumble general election. Not so this go round. The Democrats will hold their Convention first in Denver, August 25-28 and the Republicans will hold their Convention in St. Paul, September 1-4. The traditional start of the general campaign is the day following the Labor Day holiday. Because the Conventions are also the last remaining vestiges of Soft Money giving (the FEC assumes that the multi-millions given benefit the Convention and not the candidates!), they rake in the bucks--mostly in corporate contributions. According to data compiled by the Campaign Finance Institute, the Conventions in 1980 brought in a total of $1.1 million. In 2004, the two Conventions dragged in a combined total of $103.5 million.
