President Obama’s reelection campaign has a new tactic: scaring donors. – Politico
IT’S NOT SCARING donors when you’re stating a fact.
“I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far,” Obama wrote to supporters. “I’m not just talking about the super PACs and anonymous outside groups — I’m talking about the Romney campaign itself. Those outside groups just add even more to the underlying problem.”
The other issue is access of Super PACs to the news media, which decidedly favors Romney through Fox News coverage that promotes American Crossroads ads regularly. Since FNC is the most widely watched cable network that compounds the potential political injury through an onslaught.
Big money on steroids-O is fidning out this is not 08. GOP wil outspend us big time. Schweitzer said he wil lead a movement to repeal cittzens. We must
SCOTUS made it pretty clear yesterday, so it won’t be easy and it will take a long time.
It will take even longer, if ever, if Romney wins the white house and gets to add maybe one or two supreme court judges.
That’s why I am voting for Obama. I am NOT by any means whatsoever an Obamabot…anyone who knows me knows that…but it is plain old MADNESS to think anythink other then a HORROR show will result if mittens gets in.
If Obama has a second term, his SCOTUS picks will be exactly what the people he serves want them to be. That means that they will be the same sorts of authority-worshiping corporate lackeys Romney would have appointed. The only difference is that in the former case, you’d be telling us how much worse things would be if Romney had been elected, and in the latter case you’d be exclaiming how awful those choices are and that it’s all our fault for voting for someone else.
Or, as Vastleft put it, we need to re-elect Obama so that he can appoint judges who will rule against him. Like that’s gonna happen.
So you are telling me that the picks Obama has made in his first term are the same as what Romney would have picked? If more progressives, liberals and left wingers had voted in past elections, we wouldn’t even be having this debate about citizen united. Take the blinders off and look what this right wing court has done to this country. I for one do not want to see one or two more right wingers on the court, If that happens you will not recognize this country.
No, I believe you’re having a reading comprehension issue. I said he will nominate such people in his second term, because he no longer has any reason at all to pay attention to what you or I might want. He will do this, and he will lie about the reasons he did it. He will say it’s to placate those Republicans and prevent the filibuster that only they can take advantage of, or he will say something else, and you will believe it.
Well that’s a nice theory you have there. You know what Obama will do, you know he will lie about it, and you think you know what I will believe. I think you are really full of yourself, and consider yourself so smart that you know what people will do and think without a shred of evidence to back up such a blatant fantasy.
You mean besides that this is the way he’s behaved since he entered office? He has never, not once, done something progressive without having to. He has done everything the banks wanted on the bailout, and hasn’t done jack for individual homeowners. He cut a deal with the medical industries and the insurance industry on health care, and left us holding the bag. In the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, in which financial fraud of all sorts has been rampant, he has not put a single finance industry on trial.
I could go on, but what’s the point? If you haven’t figured this out by now, you’re not going to. Obama does what is good for Obama, nothing more. And once he’s re-elected, what’s good for Obama is doing whatever the people who can make him rich want in return for making him rich.
I have more evidence for my prediction than you do for yours.
“That means that they will be the same sorts of authority-worshiping corporate lackeys Romney would have appointed. ”
Frankly, anyone who honestly believes this is so detached from reality there isn’t really any point in even trying to have a discussion.To quote barney Frank…About as much good as trying to have a discussion with a kitchen table”
So….there is something “detached from reality” about predicting that Obama will continue to be the same person in a second term that he’s been in his first?
Seriously?
And are you really the poster to accuse someone else of being “detached from reality” to begin with, Mr. Republiklant Tea Bagger Endlessly Repeated Buzzphrases spittle machine?
What evidence do you have for this, beyond the usual prejudices? Is there some force that you think is going to make Obama suddenly do something that he neither wants nor has to do? Explain what that force is, and I’ll take your opinion as the product of something more intelligent than a sack of hammers.
In all the time he has been in office, Obama has not once done anything remotely progressive, unless he knew he’d lose a key constituency if he didn’t. Once he’s back in office, he has absolutely no need for progressives, or progressive organizations. By then, they will be largely irrelevant anyway, given that most of the DC pressure groups haven’t objected to what he’s done so far. He has no reason to fear them or respect them.
So, again, what is it that you think is going to force him to do what we want, rather than what he wants?
The most reliable way to figure out what Obama is likely to do is what is in his best interests. This is what I am using as the basis of my prediction. When it’s no longer a good model, I’ll abandon it, because it frankly makes me sick to have to think this way about the person who runs our country. But I’m not going to give it up until then, especially when the best that someone can come up with as a response is some lame-ass Barney Frank quote about a kitchen table.
I agree with angels81 and sec. The Republican presidential appointees to the SCOTUS gave us Citizens United – not the Obama appointees. I’m not an Obamabot, either, but I sure don’t want Romney and the right wing in power which is exactly what will happen if Obama doesn’t get reelected. You think it’s bad now …. just wait.
In 2008, President Obama could have accepted federal dollars for his election bid like previous candidates since Richard Nixon and the corrupt days of watergate, however, he instead rejected it to allow unlimited fundraising to enter Presidential campaigns. He’s getting his wish twice. Be careful what you wish for in life.
It still looks like scaring donors to me, it’s just that they happen to have the facts behind them. Splitting hairs, I suppose, but hey…
It is rather alarming how much money is being spent, though, and to how little good purpose.
Given the topic being raised, I thought I’d share a humorous inside-baseball anecdote.
Right after the Walker win in Wisconsin, one of the Midwestern bundlers I met during the Bush Ranger days sent me an email…….”Hey this can really work! And we should be able to do it again elsewhere…….send more money!”
Priceless.
For all who are making potential Supreme Court nominations the deciding issue of the upcoming presidential election, Hugh has an answer for you.
Scalia, Thomas, and especially Roberts, didn’t get to the court without collusion from Democrats.
The food stamp story didn’t make a dent with Obama & Democratic partisans, neither did last year’s summer reality that he wanted to hoist a $4 trillion “grand bargain” up, which is still in play, by the way, so I’m not sure anything will.
Hugh, from your link over at Naked Capitalism:
Yep, just like we got Alito. The Senate Democrats could have filibustered in the same manner Republicans can. Yet somehow, this parliamentary maneuver is only available to the GOP. Why is that?
At the beginning of every session, the Senate votes on the rules it will use to govern itself and conduct its business. Every session since they took control in 2006, the Democrats in the Senate could have changed those rules by simple majority vote to avoid exactly the problems they claim the Republicans have caused them. Even assuming that they needed to learn from experience the first time, they could have changed that rule in either 2008 or 2010. They didn’t. They clearly didn’t want to be able to pass legislation enough to do that.
I’m not familiar enough with Sotamoyor’s or Kagan’s votes to know whether they deserve the labels Hugh gave them, but neither struck me as all that liberal when they were being considered. Kagan, in particular, was supportive of Obama’s overreach when she was Solicitor General. They’ve voted with the liberals on most of the cases I’ve paid attention to. Still, I’m less than awed with their potential as representatives of progressive jurisprudence.
Excellent points!
Thanks for the Hugh snippet. My favorite part:
I guess the inducement is that Obama’s appointees are the least sucky of the Supreme Court justices who suck…..meh…doesn’t get me too excited…
Let me see if I get this straight-
Obama heavily outspends McCain in 2008- no big deal, Democracy in action.
Romney outspends Obama in 2012- “Oh my God Citizens United Fascism Disaster Democracy For Sale Let’s All Around Gnashing Our Teeth The Country Is For Sale Where Did We Go Wrong??” With a little “Do you want JONES back ranting from our own band of Squealers?
Please God, save us from the pathetic, manipulative hypocritical rants of the Obamabots!
Yep, its ‘do as I say, not as I do.
Or….listen to what I say, but don’t pay attention to what I actually do….