All campaign long, Obama has said he would discourage his supporters from contributing to 527 groups, despite the fact that the McCain campaign has been using them all along. I always thought this move was a little short sighted. Republicans will use any dirty trick or loophole they can to get their nasty, below the belt messaging out, and the 527 groups are the perfect ones to counter them. Well news comes today that the Obama camp is giving subtle hints to "send in the cavalry". And I couldn't be happier.
An Obama adviser privy to the campaign's internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies -- what another campaign aide termed "the cavalry" -- with come to Obama's aid.
With all the attention now on McCain's VP pick, it's going to be hard for Obama to get his message out to media and to voters and 527s are just the groups to do it. They can go places a candidate could never dare to go, and by the looks of it, Democratic 527s have the money to do it:
The money is there. The top two 527s -- the Service Employees International Union and America Votes -- are liberal in orientation. The SEIU fund has contributed to other 527 efforts, and America Votes has earmarked most of its money for what it calls the "largest grassroots voter mobilization" in history. The third largest 527 -- American Solutions Winning the Future -- belongs to Newt Gingrich, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The AFL-CIO has budgeted more than $53 million for messaging and turnout efforts and has run a limited flight of ads featuring veterans criticizing McCain. But they've shied away from larger-scale campaigns in part because they believe -- or believed -- that the Obama campaign did not want them mounted.
And Obama is sending out the signals to "bring it on". This election is too important. We must do everything, use every resource available to us, to win this thing. GO 527s!