Seeing this
Yahoo! news story about robust GOP fundraising got me to thinking.
Here are the facts on the ground.
The RNC, which has been outraising the Democratic National Committee by a 2-1 margin, reported Friday that it had nearly $39 million cash on hand at the end of January.
The GOP national committee raised $101.5 million in 2005, twice the amount raised by the DNC through the year. The RNC had almost six times more in the bank than Democrats at the end of the year.
Remember, a lot of these donors are buying something. What are they buying? Perthaps they are buying right to pollute your air, water, and food supply with impunity. Perhaps they are buying the right to never be held accountable when they sell and market dangerous or defective products. Perhaps they are buying the right to treat their employees as sharecroppers. Perhaps they are buying the right to rewrite the laws concerning public benefits to boost their bottom line, the remedial purpose of those laws be damned. Perhaps they are buying the right to some obscure change to the tax code that will given them a massive return on their relatively small investment. Or perhaps they are buying the inside track to lucrative government contracts, which could give them a similar windfall.
Now there is nothing particularly new or surprising about the story I linked tom and I'm not claiming that there is. But there is something that this and other stories like it that throw one fact about campaigns and elections in the current climate into high relief.
The DLC's "Republican lite" strategy has failed miserably.
To the extent it ever had any merit, it is gone. I am by no means naive about campaign money. Back in the '70s and '80s, when it appeared that Democratic control of at least the House seemed a mortal lock, and there was a good deal of difficulty winning the White House, it made a certain sense to attempt to compete for corporate political largesse. They had to deal with your party, but I can at least understand the rationale behind giving the fat cats some additional incentive to hedge their bets, which they did through the Clinton years; sure they might prefer absolute GOP control, but as long as that wasn't a realistic goal, they weren't going to risk totally alienating the Democratic Party. As such, an entity such as the DLC served a useful function in the electoral sense.
Fast forward to now. The Republicans run everything, and the kind of people who have the kind of scratch to spend on political campaigns seem like it that way. (Yeah, there are some exceptions, even in the business world, in addition to the expected coterie of liberal Hollywood stars and such.) The DLC approach makes no sense anymore. The kind of people the DLC hope to appeal to for campaign donations already have what they want with BushCo.
That K Street money isn't coming back our way anytime soon. And why would it?
To the extent that the DLC ever had any semblance of electoral victory or electoral muscle, it rode on the back of one of the most brilliant political minds of this generation or any other generation. And its victories turned out to be hollow, as Democrats, only five years after Clinton left office, are fighting rear guard actions to prevent our public policies from reverting to 1920 or even 1890.
Does this mean that we run need to hard left in the reddest of "red" states? Not by any means. But what has been tried has been found wanting.
We just have to ask ourselves: What are voters in conservative districts, the sort of areas that Dems used to carry but no longer do, clamoring for? I would bet good money that they're not clamoring for things like a corporate-written bankrutpcy bill, or any of the other lobbyist-drafted goodies that the GOP Congress and administration have been implementing. And yet this is precisely where the Liebermans and Bidens of the world are constantly capitulating. When Democrats run DLC-inspired campaigns in tough states, or even, inexplicably, in states that are good for Dems, this is the kind of stuff they usually tout when trying to establish "moderate" credentials. In their efforts to look "reasonable," they look they stand for nothing.
I can't think of any other reason that someone like Lieberman, who despite all you can say against him, has always voted for choice, has a reasonable record as to worker's rights, and an outstanding record on environmental issues, would stand in the way of an effort to keep someone like Samuel Alito, whose record on the above issues as a jurist is one of unrelenting hostility, off the highest court in the land.
The road to long-term success requires effecting a fundamental change to the rules of the game. We're not going to win the money wars. Any fresh ideas from beyond the insular world of the Beltway?
I'll start with one. The Abramoff scandal is the key. Maybe most Republican lobbyists aren't getting themselves implicated in mob hits, maybe they're not as brazen about their use of "values" voters as total dupes while working for casino gambling interests, and maybe they aren't doing anything quite as repugnant to the average voter (assuming they knew about it, which most of them still don't) as handing Chinese textile barons the right to stamp "Made in the USA" on sweatshop goods. But they're all part of the problem. They've collectively turned Congress into an auction house where our laws, our human rights, and our democracy is all up for sale to the highest bidder. Abramoff may be a much better subject for a trashy made-for-TV movie, but he is not unique.
If people can't get outraged about that, it's time to turn out the lights.