Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:43:25 PM
Let's not get into Obama the flip-flopper. Presidential politics demands thinking on the fly and moving strategies week by week. Rarely do you find a candidate whose mindset is so compelling that circumstances open the White House for them just by "being themselves". Ronald Reagan is the last one that comes to mind. It was his time. America was as ready for him in 1980 as they wouldn't have been in 1968.
This is about the incredible rationales for Obama foregoing public funding for his campaign. I understand why he had to do it. It couldn't have been an easy decision. In order for this to work for him, he will have to easily double the $80M+ that McCain will get to work with.
That means spending an incredible amount of valuable campaign time fund raising. It means sucking up to Hillary's donor base. And raising upwards of $160 million means that it will be damned near impossible to maintain the illusion of stark independence from "lobbyists and special interest groups".
McCain doesn't have to do it, because his smarter people are telling him he will get a significant burst in donations late in the campaign season, from conservatives scared witless of the Obama spectre. In the meantime, much of that money is going to an already robust GOP. The Republican money is there.
Obama has no choice because the Democrat coffers, run into the ground by hapless Howard Dean, will offer him no help to speak of this fall. Barrack is on his own, and he needs every dollar he can get to be competitive.
The joke is the rationale presented to us- a haunted world of conservative 527 groups, coming out of the bushes to "swift boat" him. Funny thing, though: the likes of DailyKos, Media Matters and MoveOn have outspent their conservative mirrors by a factor of two to one this year. George Soros and his ilk have pumped well over $100M into the media already, and they show no sign of slowing down.
I think that Obama knows full well that his "discouragement" of them will do nothing to slow down their work this summer.
Barrack is not only a true politician, but he is a relativist at heart. He is not the grand uniter. He is an old fashioned urban politico from the South Side of Chicago. David Brooks has labeled him "Fast Eddie" Obama. Watch that one stick later this year.
That's the unholy side of a national campaign. It ain't the primaries. You can have the old media in your camp, but too much tradition is out there to actually attempt to illuminate the positions of each major candidate. The song and dance of Obama to date, explaining the hypocrisies and faults of McCain while offering nothing specific in contrast, will not fly in that crucible.