Reply #45: Here's the difference [View All]

[Eloriel]

You're basing your whole argument on a mistaken premise. Several, probably.

One of your mistaken premises is that who raises the most money is ALWAYS the winner, and that's demonstrably not true. Democrats are almost always outspent by their GOP opponents in all sorts of races. If your premise held, there'd be no Dems in office anywhere in the land.

The richest 10% of the people have 90% of the money. Fact.

And totally irrelevent. It's not like that richest 10% can give unlimited amounts to Bush. They can't. The max is $2K per individual and $5K per PAC.

The whole point of what Dean is doing is that the other 90% have ENOUGH money to fund a Democratic people-financed campaign at an average of $75 a contributor if there's a powerful enough candidate. I've even seen unemployed people contributing to Dean. Most Dean contributors have never given to ANY campaign before. They think he's worth the investment and so do I. And so will potentially a million or two more. Dean is the biggest fundraiser so far among Dems, and yet he's only had 200,000 different contributors. There's a LOT of room there for growth, and Dean is going nowhere but up.

The GOP has always had more large and small dollar individual contributors. Fact.

I don't know that it is a fact, but even if it is -- it means what? That we're outnumbered? Not currently among actual contributors to both Dean and Bush.

Therefore, if the GOP has BOTH more contributors, and the contributors have 9-10 times more money, there is NO WAY Dean can come close to closingt the campaign cash gap.

Here's what you're ignoring. ALREADY Dean has more contributors than Bush, and a large percentage are people who have NEVER contributed to ANY candidate before. This is NEW in the political history of the U.S.

Further, as I've already pointed out, it's not absolutely necessary that any Dem candidate match Bush dollar-for-dollar. It never is.

I don't care how much Trippi's faith-based-math you present, it's rubbish. Trippi's math does not include the increases that will happen in GOP fundraising when the election is at the top of the news cycle more regularly.

And the same phenomenon will operate just as well if not better for Dean, and Dean has already demonstrated his ability to not just energize the base but bring in new voters and, as I said, new contributors. By contrast, people are turning away from Bush.

The ONLY way to control the effect that neo-con money has in the political process is by limiting it's effects in CFR legislation that the GOP cannot opt out of.

No disagreement there. And your plan for implementing it for this election cycle is .... ???

Dean has already pledged to support public financing of campaigns. In the meantime, his campaign IS campaign finance reform.

Eloriel