I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to political horseraces; this is the first election cycle I've been following with a magnifying glass. I'm endlessly fascinated with the very different ways Obama and McCain are going about their campaigns.
Obama tends to veer towards populism, hiring extremely smart people who might not be best of friends but definitely know their stuff. We all know this, we're betting the next four years on this extraordinary guy.
But he's extraordinary for another reason; he's forgone public campaign financing. This, coupled with his reliance on small donors, makes him different in that for the first time, "We, The People" seem to have been given the purse strings for his entire campaign.
I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to political horseraces; this is the first election cycle I've been following with a magnifying glass. I'm endlessly fascinated with the very different ways Obama and McCain are going about their campaigns.
Obama tends to veer towards populism, hiring extremely smart people who might not be best of friends but definitely know their stuff. We all know this, we're betting the next four years on this extraordinary guy.
But he's extraordinary for another reason; he's forgone public campaign financing. This, coupled with his reliance on small donors, makes him different in that for the first time, "We, The People" seem to have been given the purse strings for his entire campaign.
This occurred to me when reading the latest FISA bill discussion on Slashdot, when a rather agitated poster demanded that if Obama supported Telecom Immunity, the voters should yank Obama's funding, quite literally.
This is a very powerful concept. Because his politics are a people-powered one, Obama's at the whim of the People, rather than lobbyists or special interest groups. He's relying on the several million people that have donated to keep donating, to keep evangelizing.
But what if he screws up in our eyes? What if he caved and not only allowed immunity to get by in the Senate, but even praised it? Would there be enough of an angry caucus of Democrats to punish him by drawing down his campaign contributions?
This isn't entirely unheard of; the Angry Libertarian wing of the Republican Party are rabble-rousing inside the GOP, and there's some indications that they're planning to disrupt their own convention in order to send a message that a significant amount of Republicans don't support McCain. People-powered politics once again.
The same Slashdot poster suggested that Democrats "Stop being adoring fans and start thinking like empowered citizens." This is, I think, great advice. The less politics becomes a popularity contest and instead becomes one where candidates are put up by empowered, interested citizens, the more robust our Republic becomes.
By having control of the funding, citizens can demand better and more representative candidates, rather than having to "compromise" with a guy who doesn't, say, steal skin from corpses (what was that Republican guy?). This would be the eventual outcome of grass-roots political movements like DKos, I think, and that's a Very Good Development.
Enjoy your new power; the 21st century is going to be very interesting for our democratic system :)
Just food for thought.