Is Turd Blossom pre-spinning a Romney loss? Maybe:
“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his [Romney’s] advantage,” Rove told The Washington Post.
If President Obama wins this election (and I think he will), what does that say about the power of Super PACs? Here’s OpenSecrets.org’s total Super PAC spending broken down by ideology:
Conservative groups have outspent liberals two to one. For nearly four years, their political operatives in Congress have worked very hard to sabotage every attempt President Obama has made to deal with the crappy economy so that they could run as the out party during a persistent economic crisis, and their 2012 standard bearer promised yesterday that unless he is elected, Republicans in the House will continue to fuck America up the ass for having the temerity to elect a Democrat as president.
And yet it looks like there’s a pretty decent chance that they’ll not only fail to unseat President Obama, the Dems will retain narrow control over the Senate and pick up some seats in the House. What does it mean? Dr. Krugman thinks it might reveal a so-called political genius as a common grifter:
Well, what if we’ve been misunderstanding Rove? We’ve been seeing him as a man dedicated to helping angry right-wing billionaires take over America. But maybe he’s best thought of instead as an entrepreneur in the business of selling his services to angry right-wing billionaires, who believe that he can help them take over America. It’s not the same thing.
And while Rove the crusader is looking — provisionally, of course, until the votes are in — like a failure, Rove the businessman has just had an amazing, banner year.
If this scenario comes to pass, the biggest losers, of course, will be the billionaires who have spent astonishing sums to purchase our democracy fair and square — with bupkis to show for it on November 7. Sheldon Adelson and family will be out $53.69 million. The Koch Bros. will be $36.66 (number of the devil!) lighter.
They’re businessmen. Maybe they’ll conclude it would have been cheaper to just pony the fuck up on their taxes? Hahahaha!
[X-posted at Rumproast]
mai naem
I think there was a slim chance of the Dems taking the House and Obama’s crappy performance in the First Debate cost us that opportunity. Also, I am not going to believe anything until they announce it on Tues PM and Romney calls Obama to concede. I am still too worried about the Voter Suppression and Republican shenanigans. If Obama wins, he’s going to have cleared so many hurdles.
dmsilev
There was a story in the LA Times about a week or so ago about the campaign operations of both sides. Money that the campaign raises goes to contractors, who funnel most of it to media buys and keep some as their profit margin. For Mitt Romney, that profit margin was $130 million. For Barack Obama, $6 million. That’s an awful lot of donor money going to “overhead” rather than ads.
It’s also eerily similar to the business model of Mitt Romney’s Bain operations.
Pamoya
I had to listen to a conservative radio show yesterday for work (research). Their latest conspiracy theory was that Obama created the hurricane. (!) According to them, we have a secret super-weapon that can produce weather effects like hurricanes, and Obama used it so that he’d have the opportunity to look Presidential responding to the storm. They made birthers sound positively sane.
The Other Bob
I sometimes think is is more likely that the billionaires will use their money to raise their own army than attempt to buy another election.
dmsilev
@Pamoya: That’s an old conspiracy theory, which predates Obama by years and years and years. Google on HAARP.
Hunter Gathers
That’s pocket change to those Creepy Crackers. I’m sure Adelson spends more than that on boner pills, hair dye, postage on love letters to Bibi Netanyahu and Thai hookers every year.
The Pyaramid Scheme known as the Conservative Movement continues…
General Stuck
All that smackola and just read an NBC poll with Obama up 6 in Ohio. What’s a gazzillionaire gotta do to buy an election in this country? Buncha commies that don’t stay bought like a peon should in a free country.
I may have to rethunk Citizens United as a kind of back door stimulus bill from idiots with money.
Schlemizel
What an Obama win says about the super PACs?
Is says they have not yet figured out how to leverage all that money into total domination, YET.
Give them some time. Between the bottomless well of cash and the increased efforts to damage voting they will figure it out soon enough.
General Stuck
crap, I hate the smell of moderation in the morning.
Elizabelle
Sour grapes pie from Kathleen Parker. It’s what’s for breakfast!***
.
No mandate, hmmm? We’ll see about that.
*** before GOTV
Betty Cracker
@mai naem: I’m not counting any chickens (that aren’t in my backyard) until Tuesday PM either, but if we DO win, and I think we have an excellent chance of it, you’re right about those hurdles.
Did you see the Maddow show last night? She talked about the gigantic early voting clusterfuck here in FL, openly fomented by Governor (P)rick Scott in a bald-faced attempt to deliver FL to Romney. I’m doing GOTV work this weekend to try to counteract it, but honestly, I’m amazed we’re keeping it close down here. I’ll be overjoyed if we win.
debbie
All facets of Rove’s strategy have worked against the Republicans. Between exposing themselves as the real source of voter fraud and uniting union members, Rove has ensured Republican defeats at every level. Maybe not the blowout we’d like to see, but a definite repudiation.
Especially with these super PACs, who were all over the place with their messages. I remember an ad during the Republican primary from American Future Funds who accused Wall Street of supporting Obama and Obama of sympathizing with Wall Street. What part of the Republican message was that?!?
The most constructive thing conservatives could do would be to fire Rove. Happily, they never will.
Chyron HR
If only he was front and center talking some more about crushing the 47% cockroaches, he’d be up in the polls again.
Gypsy howell
@Schlemizel:
I agree. This could just be the Barry Goldwater 1964 moment for Citizens United. They’ll spend e next four years, and four years after that and four years after that honing and improving their advertising, until one day it WILL be effective.
mikefromArlington
I just hope the Neanderthals don’t clean our clocks at the local state level again where thier backwards way of thinking is affecting women’s lives.
dp
I wonder how many tens of those millions got hoovered into Karl Rove’s bank account, rather than being spent changing hearts and minds?
The grifters change, but the grift remains the same.
Mike Lamb
@Schlemizel: Seriously. When that money is put behind a more personable right wing crank, it could be trouble.
Tokyokie
I thought when Rove announced his American Crossroads PAC in the light of the Citizens United decision, that it would be more of a grifter operation than an effective means of opposition. Looks like I was right. When one side values accumulation of material wealth above everything else, including party and country, of course they’re going to attract grifters. That’s the point. Hell, Romney even grifted his own church.
ericblair
I’m sure the Unskewed Polls guy will be back to selling overpriced gold coins and Freedom Seeds to the same paranoid cranks on Nov 7. The teabaggers ain’t gettin any younger and there’s still some Sociable Security checks that haven’t gotten chiseled out of them yet.
mikefromArlington
Wtf!!!
Just flipped to fox and friends and they had 170,000 jobs lost for October On the bottom of the screen I shit you not
Handy
I hope these billionaire slugs get nothing for all those dollars. Thinking about where the money went I still wonder how many right wing nutcases were promoted to millionaire to fight another day? Rove made out like a bandit and as long as the right has a bigger mountain of money they will be a well funded enemy.
We can never relent, never surrender.
The day after the election we have to start a few fights with Obama. Nothing comes easy.
Robin G.
@dp:
Ding ding ding! Not just Rove, of course — where was that article about how Romney’s spend some ungodly amount of SuperPAC money on business associates of his friends and staffers? Commercials are the new concrete.
I’m really hoping to discover on Nov. 7 that there really is a limit to what corporate cash can buy.
mai naem
I hope the DOJ finds stuff on Adelson on the Macau Foreign Corrupt Practices deal. I don’t think Adelson gives whit about conservatives. It’s all about keeping his financial empire alive on Macau and keeping his ass out of prison. Same goes for Steve Wynn. Same goes for the hedge funds people. It’s all about $$$. Can’t wait till Preet Bharara and BJ Kang get their hands on Steven Cohen.
catclub
There is a highly relevant – and very long – article
linked here
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_long_con
on the interrelationship of conservatism and fleecing the rubes.
It makes the point that by lying Romney shows he is a true conservative leader.
So it must be like – zeitgeist day.
Marty
Funny thing that most of those conservative millions are probably spent in the battleground states, where they provide a concentrated, local economic stimulus … which helps Obama.
mai naem
@Betty Cracker: Rick Scott is a scumball. I still cannot get over Floridians voting in the biggest evah Medicare Fraudster. I mean, how stupid can you be?
dr. bloor
I’m pleased to see the SuperPAC money being flushed down the loo without results this cycle, but I don’t think you can draw any conclusions about the influence of Big $$$ going forward. The first time someone like a Huntsman can get out of the Republican primaries with that sort of financial backing in the general, he (or she) will clean up.
That, of course, is one reason that it’s good to see Rove attributing the loss to a nothingburger like the storm and the conspiracy theorists out in force. It suggests that their grifters will keep on grifting and the nutters will keep on nutting.
cat
How many times did everyone click on the radio buttons trying to change the chart before they realized it was an image?
3 times here. :0
Linda Featheringill
If Obama wins, it will be because of hundreds of thousands of individuals who donated time and money and energy to the cause. It will be viewed widely as a victory of democracy over big money. People in all kinds of places will draw courage from our story and they’ll try equally wonderful things on their own. And it’ll make a difference in their lives.
Then maybe humans will be able to stick around a little longer. [Yeah, I worry about that.]
c u n d gulag
If Romney loses, and I’m a Billionaire who invested a lot of my easily inherited and earned money in Super PAC’s to help him win, I’d want to call in Karl Rove and have him in for a little talk about the atrocious ROI.
I’d have him walk out onto a bridge made of ice, over the shark tank in the floor of my office.
I’d ask him to account for Romney’s loss and what he did with the money?
And how he plans on repaying me?
And then watch the fat-boy sweat until it melts the bridge under him, he does his final belly-flop, and sleeps wid da fishes – what’s left of him, that is.
Tripod
Booman had a good piece up last month about this dynamic in the Walsh-Duckworth race(IL-8). Walsh is a bad candidate and a worse human being, Duckworth has led by double digits the whole way, yet the GOP PACs keep pounding money down a black hole.
Somebody is getting real paid.
scav
So, basically they’re shilling a one-trick pony that looks good from a single angle, and they know it.
Mark S.
@dmsilev:
Holy fuck, I thought Mitt was a shrewd business man and Obama was a community organizer who knew nothing about capitalism. If there ever was a snapshot at how GOP crony capitalism works, there it is.
Also, too, I saw this at CNN yesterday: Ad spending in the battleground states. Mr. UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH has gotten outspent 2 to 1.
Linda Featheringill
In the aftermath of Sandy, do you think NY and NJ can persuade this country address climate change?
Have you seen this ad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZENtH3psXl4
Comrade Scrutinizer
Shorter Rove: God doesn’t want Rmoney to win, so he sent a great storm…
patrick II
I think it is money well spent. It’s not as if liberal and conservative ideas start off on equal footing. Conservatives are selling anti-science, corporate slavery, economic stagnation, fear, and insecurity. It takes a lot of money to make that political case finish even close. Climate change is way past where a few scientists are looking obscure data-driven model projections — it is happening right in front of us, and still nearly half of the population doesn’t believe it. The Koch brothers have increased their profits by billions with investments of hundreds of millions. From their capitalist true-believer point of view, it is money well spent.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Linda Featheringill:
Phixt,
/RWNJ
CommishtheFirst
Even if Obama wins and Dems hold the Senate, super PACs will probably have saved the House for the GOP and certainly made the Senate and Presidency much closer than they should have been. They will have elected some number of smalltime nuts and grifters who should have been laughed off the ballot and, by keeping progressives on the defensive even where they win, forced the expenditure of resources and volunteer energy that could have been used to advance progressive causes. Win or lose, it’s no time to get complacent about the need for campaign finance reform.
SiubhanDuinne
@cat: Heh. Me too, but just once :-)
General Stuck
@scav:
What they are shilling is a rotten to the core candidate, that during the GOP primary, republican primary voters rejected time after time, in favor of even more rotten candidates, till Romney won as the least rotten, or the one with money.
It is amazing and scary that these people can tunnel their vision at the drop of a hat, for a yeoman’s effort to saddle the country with a president they themselves can’t stand and don’t trust for their own reasons. Having the GOP as the opposition party, is like living with the zombie apocalypse.
Thoughtful David
There is one thing interesting about the big money guys like Adelson: Assuming Obama wins, do you think he’ll get an invite to the White House in the next four years? Think he’ll have much (direct) influence? So for all of his investment, he actually will have less direct influence than he could have if he had spent half his money on Romney and half on Obama, or stayed out altogether.
The way the rich guys always used to do it was hedge their bets. Adelson et al. thought this time they could just throw enough money at it that they could get the whole ball of wax. I’m sure hoping they lost their gamble.
And it brings up another point. In the next year or so we need to make sure that the transparency laws get passed so that no one can hide their involvement with the ads, the way some are doing now. If we can do that, it will make those guys less willing to put up big money on only one side. If they think their side might lose and the other side would know who had been their opponents, they’ll be a lot less likely to go in big, or not hedge their bets.
dr. bloor
@CommishtheFirst:
Not to pick on you personally, because you see this sentiment all over the place, but I’m not at all sure this is true. The Republicans had a pretty substantial edge in House seats going into this cycle, and given that so many seats these days are gerrymandered into PermaRed or PermaBlue, flipping the House would have been a Herculean feat even under ideal circumstances.
Nancy Cadet
Speaking of post-storm , writing from NYC:I just heard a clip of former mayor (and attack dog/hack) Rudy Guiliani saying at a Romney rally” Americans may have died because of incompetence in the White House.” wow, he just finally condemned Bush & Cheney for many, many deadly acts, not to mention EPA commisioner Christine Whitman, who claimed lower Manhattan /WTC air was safe immediately after 9/11.
Cermet
@dmsilev: Where did you find that out?
Lex
No, it’s not. Interestingly, a longtime friend who worked on the Gingrich campaign left it immediately after Newt’s SC primary win because he had become convinced of this very thing: that the campaign consultants were in it to squeeze every last dollar from the campaign, not to get their candidate elected. Even in that brief moment when it looked like Newt might actually be the nominee, he saw the grifting for what it was, knew it couldn’t end well, and beat feet.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Tokyokie:
True, but the beauty of Romney’s church is that grifting the members is part of the doctrine.
Fluke bucket
@cat: twice for me.
Fluke bucket
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): that is a common thread through them all
Xecky Gilchrist
@c u n d gulag: If Romney loses, and I’m a Billionaire who invested a lot of my easily inherited and earned money in Super PAC’s to help him win, I’d want to call in Karl Rove and have him in for a little talk about the atrocious ROI.
Exactly. Even though, as Hunter Gathers said above, the actual sums aren’t much to a billionaire, these guys didn’t get where they are today by being careless with the little tens of millions.
scav
@General Stuck: Don’t forget the solidly illuminating moment where they justify their vote by assuring themselves and all others by saying he’s just lying about that (whatever) topic under discussion and will really do x better thing.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Fluke bucket: Absolutely. But the Mormon church seems to have elevated it to an MLM art form.
WaterGirl
From Dick Durbin via email this morning:
Illinois may not be a battleground state in the presidential race. (We’re pretty big fans of President Obama here.) We may not have a Senate seat up this year.
But this could be the state where the race for control of the U.S. House of Representatives is won or lost.
I hadn’t planned on emailing you again about the House candidates I’m supporting, but these races are all coming down to the wire. They really could go either way.
With your help, we can give these great Illinois Democrats the boost they need to put them over the top — and deliver six huge House victories on Tuesday.
Click here to contribute $6 to these six great congressional candidates — before time runs out — so Democrats can take back the House this November!
Just look at how close these races are:
IL-13
Gill (D): 40
vs.
Davis (R): 39
IL-10
Schneider (D): 45
vs.
Dold (R): 44
IL-11
Foster (D): 50
vs.
Biggert (R): 49
IL-17
Bustos (D): 49
vs.
Schilling (R): 45
IL-12
Enyart (D): 51
vs.
Plummer (R): 46
IL-8
Duckworth (D): 50
vs.
Walsh (R): 40
RSA
In addition to human suffering, Hurricane Sandy could result in $50 billion of economic damage. And Romney has nothing to say about that? If Romney were a good Presidential candidate, the storm would have been an opportunity to explain how he’d ensure recovery in the affected areas of the country. But instead Sandy is just a distraction. Bad programming.
me
@Xecky Gilchrist: Perhaps, but the Perlstein article above suggests that for Rove, lining his pockets is SOP for things like this.
quannlace
Speaking of clocks, I don’t know why they don’t postpone ending Daylight Savings for another week. So many people here in NJ are still without power and having an extra hour to stumble around in the dark is just what they don’t need.
aimai
We will never have a Fox News or a Murdoch print empire on our side. Our millionaires and Billionaires, to the extent they exist, don’t want to spend their money deforming public opinion. If you had a real cause (global warming, health care, some disease) you’d prefer to spend the money directly subsidizing work in that area. The fact of the matter is that right wing millionaires and billionaires only profit from either seizing the treasury, lowering their own taxes, or preventing government (the biggest corporate entity still around) from interfereing with their looting and pillaging of the market and the environment. You can’t stop right wing millionaires and billionaires from attacking Democracy and trying to buy elections anymore than you can stop a farmer from farming.
Democratic organizing has to be longer term, and smarter, than every two years to four years. The democrats should be building affinity groups and local action committees that would be self funding in between elections–focused on small local projects–that could be brought together to build upwards and overwhelm mere campaign money at the end of each two year cycle.
aimai
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: We really need David Gill in my district IL-13 because his opponent is a lying sack of shit.
(I suspect folks familiar with some of the others could make a similar case.)
I am beyond tapped out, I have borrowed 1,000 in the past 3 months so I could make extra donations.
If any of you guys have any money at all to contribute to these house races, I will be forever grateful.
I know the common wisdom is that we can’t take the house back. I don’t think taking back the house is the most likely outcome, but I will not be completely surprised if we do. Just a gut feeling, I guess. This from the person who had complete faith, starting in 2007, that Barack Obama would run last time, that he would win the primary, and that he would win the general election in 2008.
So I don’t have a bad track record. :-)
Alex S.
Maybe the billionaires decide to let the Republicans sort their shit out for a few years and back Andrew Cuomo instead.
gbear
I’m sure Rove has the wherewithal and the lack of scruples to create another disaster before the election. You know he’s thinking about it…
22over7
@c u n d gulag:
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. One of the cool things about this election is that we have discovered that the billionaires are rubes, too.
Rove has charmed and consulted millions out of these guys. Next election he’ll charm and consult millions more, and they’ll love him for it.
I suspected from the beginning that this election would be big, big business for scam artists and teevee stations. Geez, some station owners in Ohio must be drowning in money.
stinger
Not wanting to jinx the outcome Tuesday, so will just say that conservatives even HAVING to spend twice what the liberals spend, should put paid to the notion of this being a center-right country.
Sly
Never assume that wealthy elites care about wealth the same way that non-wealthy elites do (i.e. a scarce resource that has the sole function of alleviating material need and want). What fundamentally drives someone like David Koch or Sheldon Adelson isn’t the cold, hard numbers on their corporate bottom lines, but the illusion of unquantifiable moral worth that being a wealthy elite creates and the sense of entitlement that it sustains.
Put another way, they’re bribing society into deifying them.
Jay in Oregon
Rove is full of shit and he knows it. Romney has done nothing but talk about the deficits and the economy.
The problem is, he’s been lying his ass off about the problems and the solutions, and everyone outside of the Teatard/Fox News bubble knows it.
Romney can’t go to Detroit and talk about how Obama failed them when every single auto worker knows that Romney doesn’t give a shit about them or their jobs.
All of Romney’s problems are self-inflicted; the 47% video, his tax returns, the Olympics, Bain Capital, and—most of all—that he’s a horrible human being.
Davis X. Machina
@mai naem:
I don’t know where this idea ever came from.
The House was always a stretch, varying only in degree. Except for a few weeks in March, IEM contracts involving a Dem house (link is to RS_DH12’s, the volume on House-only futures was thin, and worse for the Dems) never exceeded $.30 and often traded for near half that. They bottomed in July, well before the debates.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: Please be careful and don’t over do it.
I’ve given a lot this year, more than I should have, but we can afford it. Borrowing money to support candidates is going too far – and I think the candidates would agree.
The candidates need enough money to get their message out and get their people to the polls. But money isn’t going to win the election. (Remember president John Connally and President Gramm?) Don’t get too caught up in the fundraising soap opera. You’re not going to lose the races for them. :-)
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who just kicked some more in for the IL races, for you. Take a contribution break now. ;-)
Donut
@The Other Bob:
I am sure it sounds almost hyperbolic to some,I haven’t read the rest of the comments yet, but I agree. We are at a point where right wing elites are angry, reactionary, disinterested in civic duty, let alone lacking any sense of altruism or, in many ways, basic humane feelings towards those not of their station.
It’s not as if elites raising their own armed forces is without precedent.
Obama’s reelection will be a very good thing for the country and the world, but we are still very much in peril. The right wing elites are not going to see a Romney defeat as a failure of their ideology, and already they are throwing Chris Christie under the bus. They ain’t done with all that yet. Just getting started.
Richard Fox
@catclub: That is one of the most disturbing articles I have read in quite some time. I feel much more informed for having read it, but also now need to take another hot shower to cleanse myself. Thanks for sharing?
Villago Delenda Est
The “conservative” faithful will eat up every word that ethics-free sack of shit Rove serves up, too.
These people deserve to be serfs.
NotMax
Between income from his casinos and real estate, and return on investments, Adelson will recoup what he laid in maybe 6 months, tops, I’m a-guessing.
As for the Kochs, since their main business is privately held, not public, they are beholden to practically no one and could quite readily engage in creative bookkeeping to move funds around to ameliorate any outlay and funnel back what they’ve laid out in any time frame they choose.
In each case, neither of those huge donors will feel any pinch whatsoever.
when it comes to Rove, fully expect him to begin to try convincing them that a loss is because the PACs weren’t given enough money, starting on 11/7.
Poopyman
@quannlace: Uh, you realize that Daylight Savings doesn’t actually save any daylight, right? It just shifts it from the early morning hours to the early evening hours.
Today the sun rose at 7:38 where I live. Tomorrow it’ll rise at a more reasonable (IMO) 6:39.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
And that’s only the money that we know of.
It’s almost certain to go up, since the last round of financial disclosures to the FEC won’t come until January — or Nov. 2013 if one is relying on tax returns.
And that’s only the money that’s disclosed. We’ll probably never know how much more was spent by Adelson and the Kochs (and sundry other billionaires) in undisclosed funds.
.
catclub
@Richard Fox: Happy to be of service. And now you are ahead of the curve on the next post.
Southern Beale did the same thing for me on one about Romney making huge gains on the parts company part of the GM bailout.
(plus union busting for good measure) Very depressing.
grandpa john
@Schlemizel: @Schlemizel:
Wonder when they will figure out the it would help if the money was spent for some one who not a habitually obsessed liar,and a totally amoral , arrogant piece of shit sociopathic asshole But since this also defines the money men, it may take a while for them torecognize this.
xian
@mai naem: of course romney was shitting on his foot on a daily basis up to that point. I think the debate was going to cause a correction regardless. If you look at Sam Wang’s metamargin graph and turn it on its side, it looks a bit like a pendulum centered around Obama +2. It’s possible to time a swing so that the election happens when Obama is up around +5 or 6, even though it never got that far in the other direction (it never got to Obama 0 or Obama -anything), and it maybe could have become a total blowout at that point, but I kind of doubt it.
Still, if Obama wins nationally by 2.5%, then according to Wang’s calculus, the house will be close to 50/50
Arclite
I wouldn’t say that. They will probably get some house and senate seats they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. And they gained a lot of knowledge about how to deploy their money and what its limits are.
And lastly, the truth is, they came very close to winning the whitehouse in an election that shouldn’t have even been close.
PeakVT
@mikefromArlington: Fox has a long history of airing inaccurate information in the ticker.
Frankensteinbeck
@Hunter Gathers:
NO ONE can throw away 53 million dollars. Some people can spend it, but it always hurts. If anything, @NotMax: makes that point while trying to make the opposite. This is half a year’s income for Adelson. Yes, he can afford it. Pouring it down the drain and getting jack squat, maybe even getting LESS than if he’d spent nothing, will be a heartrending agony. People like the Kochs and Adelson aren’t spending this money because it’s a casual and calculated investment for greater financial returns. They’re the guy in the militia with the witch doctor Obama sign, who happens to have enough money to use that for his screaming on the street corner.
EDIT – @Arclite:
I strongly disagree. They cost themselves senate and house seats by giving megaphones to lunatics. Nor will they learn anything from that, because they want to give megaphones to lunatics. They’re not Lex Luthor. They’re bigoted, paranoid, self-important dumbasses. Nobody else is willing to spend that kind of money on a presidential race, especially considering the choices they’re pushing. As someone mentioned earlier – they’re marks, and the grifters finally found the way into their pocket books.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
This reeks of wealth redistribution. From the producers to the lowly Republican operatives who won’t take responsibility for their lives.
El Cid
Without all that SuperPAC spending, would the Presidential race be as close?
Would all the Senate and Congressional and state level races be as close?
I wish we could run a true scientific experiment and try an election without SuperPAC cash bombardment, but I don’t think we’ll get the opportunity.
Hal
What about the concept of diminishing return? The amount of money for political messaging vastly increases, but the overall electorate basically stays the same. How many times can you propagate the same message to the same listener before they either accept the message and agree, or basically tell you to go fuck yourself, I disagree, and I’m doing the exact opposite? At the end of the day, all this money can only do so much. Shockingly, you still need an actually decent candidate to run. And that is definitely not Mitt Romney.
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck: FYWP is on a roll today.
Not Sure
Well, I always said you need to outspend the truth 3:1 to sell bullshit. And that’s when you have quality bullshit to sell. It was probably easier to reach this ratio in the days when we had working campaign finance laws.
Another Halocene Human
@cat: One time, hit back, suddenly got a clue and felt stupid.
Another Halocene Human
@c u n d gulag: Unfortunately for panache, the robber barons will just fall back on their usual fallback, blaming gullible voters for falling for the Kenyan Usurper’s demagoguery. (And don’t forget voter fraud/election fraud/wrong people voting.)
LD50
I’ve always noticed, it costs FAR more to make people vote Republican than it does to make them vote Democratic.
LD50
If any Republican starts saying Rove is infallible, just remind them of how he handled the ’06 midterms.
Bex
@dmsilev: That conspiracy theory predates Obama by centuries…good example was the 15th century queen, suspected of being a witch, who supposedly “whistled up a wind” to ensure her husband’s military victory.
Another Halocene Human
@CommishtheFirst: Hear, hear. If nutbag Tea Partier Ted Yoho makes it to the US House, it will be on the wings of millions in outside money.
He will represent a vast, rural district where his Dem opponent’s main challenge has been name recognition.
The whole thing is so Old South, a tiny, uberwealthy landowning elite purchasing their candidate who doesn’t represent the views of 90% of the public. And the beauty part is, they don’t have to even get their hands dirty turning away would-be voters from the courthouse any more.
(What also fucking sucks is that the usual progressive fundraising machines won’t touch the Dem because he’s too moderate, which of course is good politics for district, and no, he is a not a Kooky Kristian or a podunkistani, he just has more than two braincells to rub together and knows what kind of place he’s living in, much like McCaskill. The Fla Dem Party didn’t fund him, which ought to be a fucking endorsement. Anyway, if Yoho gets in I have no doubt he will be saying and doing st00pid things and the dKos progs will be rushing to put him out of office in 2014… even though keeping him out in the first place in 2012 would have been cheaper. WTF.)
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: Democratic organizing has to be longer term, and smarter, than every two years to four years. The democrats should be building affinity groups and local action committees that would be self funding in between elections—focused on small local projects—that could be brought together to build upwards and overwhelm mere campaign money at the end of each two year cycle.
You’ve got it.
Historically, single-issue organizing was bipartisan. It seems to me that the Republicans have taken themselves out of the equation. Still, I see problems hitching advocacy to the Democratic Party. In my state, I believe the labor movement is a better recipient of my energy. Most of the reform in Florida lately has come from a coalition of the Florida AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters, and the Florida ACLU. There are some smaller groups that are more regional, like Jobs with Justice (Centr. Fla., largely Hispanic), Fla. NAACP (Northeast Fla.), Florida New Majority (young immigrant, South Fla.) that generally jump on the bandwagon, and there is SDS in the state universities, mainly obsessed these days with fighting tuition increases and other changes that seem calculated to drive poor students out of the state colleges. And let’s not forget the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, proof that you CAN fight city hall or in this case, the entrenched powers that be in the ag biz.
The Dem party has been an ally on women’s reproductive freedom and not much else, from where I sit. However, they DO sign on to progressive legislation that comes from the grass roots at the county level. Which is about what you can hope for from a political party.
Build the coalition at the grass roots. Drive the agenda. Find a way to get your candidates into office*. Don’t confuse a political party with the movement.
*-this has been a problem in Florida. The Fla. AFL-CIO is trying to address this at long last, but I think we also need more coordination between activists statewide and a firm grounding in reality. This is challenging because the state is fucking huge. Leaving good candidates to rot and then blaming the DPoF is not getting us anywhere. The Party exists to perpetuate the Party and get everyone paid. So fuck them.
Another Halocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: People like the Kochs and Adelson aren’t spending this money because it’s a casual and calculated investment for greater financial returns. They’re the guy in the militia with the witch doctor Obama sign, who happens to have enough money to use that for his screaming on the street corner.
Probably beating a dead thread here (I am, aren’t I?) but look at who you’re talking about. Kochs spent millions fighting each other in court. They seem to be prone to obsessions and doubling down. Spending enormous sums probably underscores their sense of self worth and identity.
Adelson is a stupid gangster who has a ‘legit’ label by dint of committing his crimes overseas. When the popo finally circle in he’ll wonder how he got to such a state. Watch for a conversion to an extremist sect with a special
gururabbi and possibly even a flight to Israel.Frankensteinbeck
@Another Halocene Human:
I agree with you entirely here. The Kochs in particular will continue spending vast sums to fight the Socialist Menace of the 1920s, and will get no smarter about it. This is what they live for, and worth all of the money no one else would be willing to pour down that hole.
MikeS
@quannlace: Ending daylight saving time on schedule will make it easier for people who have to get up and stumble around in the dark to get ready for work. I would like to eliminate Daylight savings time altogether. It doesn’t save energy.
Henry Bayer
Yes, I know there was no bad intent on this. However.
If you think the worst thing you could describe is for a political party to “fuck America up the ass” then should we go back to making anal sex illegal for everyone? Maybe next time you could use something we could agree on as being bad, such as rape (when not intended by God).
Betty Cracker
@Henry Bayer: I quite frequently describe being cheated out of money / goods / labor as being “screwed,” “boned,” etc. it doesn’t mean I’m against copulation; I am merely crude. Lighten up , Francis.
Betty Cracker
@Another Halocene Human: Fucking Yoho! I passed 10k signs for that mofo on the way home from the Suwannee today. Go down in flames, Yoho!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Betty Cracker: OTOH, I think Henry made a good point.
I’m more of a fan of thoughtful insults like the Martin Luther Insult Generator than yet another “anal thus-and-so” or “douchebag this-and-that” or “cock something-or-other”. One often has to wonder if the homophobic- and misogynistic-language so causally thrown around isn’t projection…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cain
@patrick II:
The problem is that eventually climate change is going to affect their business. By then it will be too late and they’ve spent so much money fighting it, now they’ll be demanding govt fix it and yelling that the president should have seen this something blah blah blah leadership blah blah blah.
It’s going to be great watching a bunch of 1% lose their beachfront property.
Betty Cracker
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Eh. Reminds me of those people who claim folks only swear because they lack the vocabulary to express themselves more creatively. Fuck that bullshit. As for projection, I’m not the one assuming anal sex can only occur between two men or between a dominant male and subordinate female. And with that, I give this thread a straight chick flounce….
Cain
@stinger:
They have to spend more because of all the grifters like consultants and what not. They hardly have a ground game so where is all that money going? You can bet all that is lining the pockets of everyone. Trickle down economics works in republican circles that’s why they believe in that shit.
folsom ca
@WaterGirl: I did give to all seven candidates. I also gave to Heidi H. in ND and E Warren in Ma. Good luck in Illinois, it is almost over. Do not go into debt over this. Folsom.
folsom ca
@folsom ca: does everyone have to wait 4 minutes to reply. Just asking.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Betty Cracker: Just to try to be a little clearer…
I took Henry’s comment to be more general than a specific criticism of your post. You’re free, of course, to post what you like. I think you’re quite talented and entertaining when you do so. I appreciate your input here.
(I also took Henry’s comment to be a gentle suggestion rather than a criticism.)
We all know that many trolls here go overboard on the intentionally offensive misogynistic and homophobic language (especially when it’s directed at other posters).
So, I’m sorry that my – “One often has to wonder if the homophobic- and misogynistic-language so causally thrown around isn’t projection…” – ended up being directed at you. It wasn’t intended to be – it was intended to take your response to him as an opportunity to make a larger point.
Apologies.
Cheers,
Scott.
Patricia Kayden
“Sheldon Adelson and family will be out $53.69 million. The Koch Bros. will be $36.66 (number of the devil!) lighter.”
That’s all they lost? I was hoping it would be a lot more. That’s nothing to billionaires. Looks like apart from their egos being bruised, they’ve not lost much in this election.
Hope President Obama taxes them to the hilt after he wins!!!!