15 Comments

1. Kevin P:

Roger:

The Kaus article is interesting but I still think McCain-Feingold, which I supported, was a complete failure. The main goals of the bill was to reduce the amount of money that was spent on campaigns and somehow keep the amount of negative attack ads in check. Record amounts of cash was spent and there were plenty of “negative” ads.

The mistake that McCain, Feingold and I made was to think that somehow legislation could restrain or purify political free speech. This election has shown that it was a fools pursuit and at its core unconstitutional and anti democratic. We treated the voters as children and arrogantly assumed they were not capable of using their brain to seperate mud from truth. As with most things that eminate from Washington it was too complicated and worthless.

The same mindset is now training it’s mind to the Internet. The blogs are basically self policing and if the government tries to restrain the political arguments, and yes even the crap that is spread, they will cause more harm then good. They should make the donation of money to campaigns as transparent as possible and then let it rip. If Soros had given the money directly to Kerry or the DNC it would have caused worry and hurt Kerry politically and made the voters wonder what Soros wanted in return.As it was the 527’s were able to get as dirty as they wanted to without it being tied to the candidate. And the cordination problem will be solved with cut outs and some well placed winks and nods. Get rid of the laws and let freedom of speech do it’s job.

Dec 31, 2004 - 11:45 am 2. Roy Lofquist:

McCain-Feingold is not about the prez campaign. It is about the congressional campaigns. Note that there were no 527’s formed for these campaigns.

M-F removes the big ticket donors from those races where they could actually buy some influence. You can’t buy the president for $50,000 but you can certainly buy senators and congressmen for that amount. When was the last time you heard a congressman campaign on the amount of federal transportation money he brought to the district? Only to his big donors.

This may explain why the Dems are talking about easing up on the abortion issue. The baby killers didn’t show up with the big bags of cash this year.

Dec 31, 2004 - 11:49 am 3. David Thomson:

ìCouldn’t Kerry have said “I want to run a positive, responsive campaign that answers vicious attacks” and then winked at the camera?î

—Mickey Kaus

Mickey Kaus is not so subtly hinting that the Swift Boat attack ads were not accurate. On the contrary, the central reason why the liberal 527 groups failed to effectively respond to these attack ads—is because they were substantially true! At the very worst, there were a few examples of people interpreting various incidents in a completely different manner. This is not necessarily proof of dishonesty. It happens all the time when police officers interview witnesses at an accident site.

Is he totally unaware that the Massachusetts senator almost certainly lied about spending Christmas in Cambodia? What about Kerryís refusal to release all of his military records? No, the lack of coordination between the 527 groups and the Kerry campaign was not the problem. It was John Kerryís lies that had finally caught up to him.

Dec 31, 2004 - 12:16 pm 4. David Thomson:

One more thing:

ìReady for Primary Time, not for Prime Time: Alert kf reader T.A. points out that TV ads–the ones the Dem 527s failed to run–weren’t the only way for Kerry could have effectively rebutted the Swift Boat Veterans’ charges:

What was called for was something along the lines of the Checkers speech or the Pink Press Conference. Even if the campaign didn’t have any money, Kerry could have done an interview with Chris Wallace or someone and gotten his side out. …

Instead, Kerry went into a ëmedia shell.íî

The last thing John Kerry should have done was allow himself to be interviewed by the hard hitting Chris Wallace. This would have sunk his campaign for sure. Kerry actually did the smart thing by running away. The truth would have hurt far more. John Kerry was betting on the dishonest MSM protecting him—and he came close to being right on election day.

Dec 31, 2004 - 12:35 pm 5. Rick Ballard:

“Because at some level they were conned by their peers and their Dem campaign sources (who were probably conning themselves)”

I suppose that it is very difficult to refute an argument based upon media stupidity but an alternative explanation might be that they were trying to drive down confidence among Bush supporters. I would argue that it is as difficult to con cons as it is to BS BS’ers. And the “brilliant” Mark Halperin gets high marks in both categories from me.

Dec 31, 2004 - 12:44 pm 6. Kevin P:

Roger:

I think one of the unintended consequences of MF is that it is an aid to incumbents. Incumbents have a built in advanyage and by restricting the amounts and types of money you can raise and spend you make it harder for an unknown to unseat an incumbent. Building name recognition takes money. And I don’t think MF has lessened the influence of corporations and money in Washington.

I think the idea was noble but it was trying to solve a problem that was misidentified. The fact that political advertising has so much influence is the problem of the voters indifference to politics, not money.One mans brutal attack ad is anothers spreading of the truth. Talk to the Move on or the Swift Boat people and they think their ads were tough but they were giving the voters the info they needed to make an informed choice. And the fact that there is no way to restrict a millionaire from spending his own money or for 527’s to be kept away from congressional races makes the legislation pointless.If the party can target local races and flood them with money, or issue ads, the spending restrictions become pointless.

I think at this point with the net as a tool the better rule would be to make all money spent on political campaigns completely transparent and available to all. If some oil company or large corporation gives a candidate a large sum of money it can be a political disadvantage as well as a blessing. Give the voter the info, let the debate be held, and get the arcane restrictions out of it. MF was an example of the boy with the finger in the dike. The money will either find a another hole or just go over the top. If the voters can be bought then they deserve the government they get. If a 60 second commercial can make up a persons mind then no amount of legislation will fix that problem.

Dec 31, 2004 - 2:29 pm 7. richard mcenroe:

Kevin P ó No aid to an incumbent is ever unintentional in Washington…

David Thomson ó Chris Wallace would have been okay, but one thing I’ve noticed now that I’ve learned to live on blog time is that even pundits I once liked seem to be behind the curve, information-wise. That, or they seem to be too concerned with their place in the press club to aggressively use the information available.

I mean really, what other reason is there to tolerate Juan Williams except to humiliate him with facts or just plain give him noogies on the air?

Dec 31, 2004 - 4:12 pm 8. richard mcenroe:

One thing I think I noted in the Kaus articles is that he posits that the 527’s didn’t succeed in getting their message across, but I didn’t see any suggestion that in fact the lefty 527’s failed because the audience DID get their message and rejected it…

Dec 31, 2004 - 9:19 pm 9. thibaud:

If anything the 2004 prez election demonstrated the complete irrelevance of 527 funding to the outcome. Thanks to his gazillionaire supporters, Kerry and his sympathizers literally had more money than they knew how to use, as illustrated by their idiotic media buys in the the New York market, of all places, in the waning days of the campaign.

Of many ironies we can note that for years Democrats have complained about the influence of Big Money, ie pro-Republican money, in US politics. And where was the biggest money of all in 2004? From none other than Mr “I’ll Spend Whatever it Takes” Soros and his confrere Peter Lewis of Ohio.

And then in the supreme irony, it was grass-roots, dare one say working-class, Republican volunteers who out-hustled, out-listened, out-organized the Dems and their money-driven, mercenary bands.

It seems pretty obvious that Kerry would have had better luck if he’d raised only one-third as much money and been forced to rely on volunteers and true grass-roots organization rather than big money and coin-operated union morons flown into other people’s neighborhoods.

Dec 31, 2004 - 9:33 pm 10. Peg C.:

All of the above comments seem right on to me. First of all, as a Bush supporter I have to say I perceived more truth coming from the (considerably fewer) Republican 527 ads than from the Dem side. Everything from the Dems sounded like Michael Moore to me. That’s my bias. The Swifties made devastating inroads, but ONLY because the center-right of the blogosphere took up the cause and ran with it, finally forcing the MSM to deal with it. Dem 527 groups outspent Reps by a huge factor (I don’t have the numbers but the most effective ads, by the Swifties, cost very little and were funded largely by us – I was eagerly awaiting to see each new ad my contributions had bought) and certainly would have helped Kerry to victory, along with the total complicity of the MSM, were it not for the righty blogs, the Swifties, and Rathergate (again, totally due to the bloggers). Not to be overlooked is Kerry’s miserable performance as a candidate; like Hillary, as long as he keeps his mouth shut and stays out of sight, people can stand him, to a large degree.

David Thomson nails it for me re: Kerry’s inability to defend himself in hard-hitting interviews. Having not released his military records, and with past treasonous acts being circulated on TV and the web, how on earth could he ever have countered the Swifties’ charges? This is where Kaus loses me. Dems are still living in a dream world if they think all Kerry had to do was effectively counter the attacks. It never could have happened because they were true.

It’s amazing Bush came as close to losing as he did, and in a time of war he should have won by 15 – 18%, I believe. Until you factor in the hundreds of million$ spent by the other side in 527 ads, anti-Bush movies, books, and MSM coverage, and BDS running rampant overseas and here. But, while almost any other Dem candidate would have been better (I really wanted Bush to go up against Dean, although as a former Dem I like Lieberman the best) as a candidate, the rabid BDS would likely not have been stirred up as much and more Dems might have stayed home. Certainly the Swifties never would have been heard of. In my book, they and the blogosphere did Kerry in. In the future, I believe the blogosphere will do in any candidate who has as many negatives and failings as Kerry has. I’m looking forward to seeing what it does to Hillary (I pray Frist isn’t her opponent – I can’t stand him).

I guess the bottom line for me is that, in spite of all the 527 money, thanks to the blogosphere the truth came out. Truth still wins. But I would allow all money and all speech to seek its own level and I’d get rid of M-F if I could. Money is speech in a democracy and you can’t damn up the truth.

Jan 1, 2005 - 7:32 am 11. Peg C.:

Thibaud, I am not discounting the incredible organization and efforts of grassroots Republicans, but here in slightly upstate NY, there was zero evidence of it. Not one call, not one knock on the door. I had the opportunity to be a local campaign leader but work precluded that. As far as Kerry goes, there could never have been a full grassroots organization and funding for him because he had little real Dem support; certainly nothing on the scale of grassroots support and love that Bush enjoys. Howard Dean certainly could have amassed a strong grassroots organization and had the beginnings of one when he imploded.

There was not a single Dem candidate who could have both stirred up the entire base with devotion as opposed to negativity and beaten Bush. They HAD to resort to 527 money. With all the MSM support and anti-Bush books and movies, they should have won…but for the blogosphere. Which explains the whining and seething from the left toward bloggers.

Jan 1, 2005 - 7:46 am 12. Bostonian:

My family of Democrats believes that the Republicans won for two reasons.

1) They’re much better organized, because they’ve had more money for decades to build up the infrastructure. (I have no idea if this is true.)

2) The left is just not as good at advertising, at targeting its message to the right demographics like those eeevil corporations.

(That’s right, there are probably millions of people in the US who never heard of Fahrenheit 911 or never saw any of the dozens of Bush-bashing books or never heard the pearls of wisdom from millionaire actors.)

My family is visiting today from their home state of Denial.

Jan 1, 2005 - 7:54 am 13. Peg C.:

Bostonian, you could be right, but I really doubt it. It was simply not possible (believe me, I tried) to avoid all the anti-Bush books, the anti-Bush references in movies (not to mention F/911 playing everywhere, including in theatres AFTER it was out on DVD, before the election!), TV shows, the anti-Bush rants by all manner of actors, musicians, U.N. officials, media giants, front pages, graffiti and bumper sticker artists, etc. One would have to have been blind, deaf and dumb. Just walking into ANY bookstore revealed multiple displays of dozens and dozens of prominently posed anti-Bush propaganda, some dressed up as respectable analysis, some simply BDS screeds.

The most ignorant people I know were able to regurgitate chapter and verse of all the arguments against Bush (not for Kerry, you notice.) No, the Dems failed because Republicans got more voters out AND enough truths were forced into the MSM by the blogosphere to preclude the BDS coalition’s win.

Jan 1, 2005 - 10:37 am 14. richard mcenroe:

Peg C ó I believe Bostonian was commenting on his family’s proclivities with irony.

In my family, there was an absolutely sharp divide. The firefighters, cops and veterans were uniformly for Bush (and Bush’s people really should have asked the NYPD and FD rank and file about Kerik; they despise the man). The property speculators and aspiring filmmakers all went for Kerry.

Jan 1, 2005 - 11:11 am 15. Bostonian:

*Her* family’s proclivities, actually.

On one of the blogs somewhere, I read an insightful comment that the media and the entertainment industry are entirely saturated with Blue America’s view of How Things Should Be, Blue America’s view of Right and Wrong, etc. You can’t escape.

Jan 1, 2005 - 3:54 pm

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