Obama takes on campaign financing

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/obama-rails-against-those-trying-buy-election-1347112491

“If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election,” Obama said to a roaring crowd in the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte.

The impassioned speech came the same week that the main pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action, said it raised $10 million in August, a record for the group, and enlisted the aid of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s campaign co-chairman, to help it raise money.

Democrats staked out positions against secret election spending, big-money politics and the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision throughout the convention.

The party is being seriously out raised by Republican super PACs and nonprofits, and its position is in stark contrast to Republicans, whose party platform opposes efforts to undo the high court’s decision.

[Igel]

1. Sorry.

Being proud of having outraised and outspent your opponent automatically raises doubts about the usefulness of complaining about the system when your opponent for a given time period outraises and outspends you.

You cannot both approve and condemn a given state of affairs. If you do so and there isn't a contradiction, it has to be resolved--most likely along the lines of, "I approve when I can outspend and outraise my opponent, because my cause is good and justifies the means; I disapprove when my opponent can outspend and outspend me, because his cause is bad and my cause is good and my cause justifies my means."

The president made a choice. As I keep telling my students, choices have consequences--own the choice, own the consequence. It's not staking out a position 2 months before the election that matters. It's the position staked out 12 or months before the election that matters.

[eridani]

2. I see no contradiction in being in a game with conditions being what they are--

--and wanting different conditions.

[nolabels]

3. So do you think it's okay for funds from outside of the US to influence the election?

Yea, it would of been a good idea for Barack to just give up years ago because money is just so corrupt. To win the position of POTUS one needs to be at least in the ballpark of the perceived opponents election funds. To equate it to some type of moral conflict is not living in the real world