Markos is absolutely, 100% correct. Barack Obama has no moral, ethical, legal, or any other obligation to tell the hundreds of thousands of ordinary folks who have enlisted in his campaign for change, and donated small sums of money to it, to go jump in the lake.
Obama's people need to stop being mealy-mouthed about this insider baseball public financing bullshit, and tell the "election reformers" to shove it up tehir collective asses.Fred Wertheimer are simply missing the forest for the trees:
Fred Wertheimer, president of the advocacy group Democracy 21, said he and others who want to curtail the role of money in politics intend to step up their pressure on Obama to accept public money if he is the Democratic nominee.
"We expect Senator Obama to meet the public commitment he made and to agree to use public financing in the general election if he is nominated and his major party opponent agrees to do the same," Wertheimer said.
Let's be clear about this, shall we? The only reason John McCain is pledging to accept public financing is because he cant raise anywhere near the money Obama can.
The idea that McCain is doing this out of some kind pf altruistic or idealistic desire for campaign finance reform is utterly ridiculous.
Not only that, Wertheimer's statement is patently offensive. As Markos said, the corrupting influence of money in politics comes from who is giving the money and for what purpose. Large amounts of money is not, per se, evil.
The Obama campaign needs to stop worrying about being labeled hypocrites by the Washington insiders and John McCain -- and stand up for the millions of ordinary people who have joined his campaign.
Frame it that way, in fact. The Obama campaign IS campaign finance reform. Gathering a large amount from hundreds of thousands of small donations. Put the onus on Fred Werthemier and the rest of the "clean elections" welfare queens to defend THEIR position.
ADDENDUM: If Obama takes public financing, it not only hurts his campaign and helps McCain. It also bails out the Republican party generally. Right now, both the Congressional campaign committees for the GOP are way behind their Democratic counterparts in fundraising. As it stand now, the RNC is planning on making up as much of the difference as t can from its own cash advantage with the DNC.
But, if McCain is also ad a huge cash advantage, that will overtax the RNC and the GOP fundraising at all levels. Obama's fundraisng advantage, therefore, assists not only his own campaign, but every single Democratic candidate in the country. Why in the hell should or would Obama willingly give up that strategic and tactical advantage?