Campaign Finance Reform and how it failed Senator Kerry in 2004.

[wisteria]

Still, even after President Bush’s first-term power grabs and deceptions had alarmed many Americans, his supportive right-wing media gave him a big edge over his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, in Campaign 2004.

In summer 2004, while Kerry was hamstrung by campaign spending limits, a pro-Bush attack group, the Swift boat Veterans for Truth, smeared Kerry over his Vietnam War record – devastating themes that were amplified not only by Fox News and right-wing talk radio but which echoed through CNN and other mainstream outlets.

In other words, progressive-backed campaign-finance reforms effectively held Kerry down while a pro-Bush attack group and the right-wing media beat him up, aided further by elements of the mainstream media, always trying to shake the “liberal bias” canard.


http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062308.html">link here

I personally think this commentary makes a good argument against Campaign Finance Reform while it also defends Senator Obama's decision not to go this route. And, explains what actually hampered Senator Kerry attempts to fend off the Swift Boat attacks in 2004.

[ProSense]

1. I think it's the other way around:

the system failed campaign finance reform.

Real reform would not have allowed the excesses of 2004.

In fact, Obama is able to opt out because his fundraising is closer to public financing than the processes being pushed as reform.

[wisteria]

2. Well, we can agree that one way or the other the system is flawed. n/t

[Mass]

3. McAuliffe failed Kerry (or anybody else who would have been the nominee) by setting the convention

date so early, and that because he did not believe he could raise the money from ordinary people.

Campaign finance needs to be fixed to get rid of the 527s and I applaud MoveOn to do so (ACT and others were pretty lousy surrogates for Kerry, taking him off message), but it is the Democratic machine who refused what Kerry tried to do to fix his problem (including promising to accept the nomination at a later date).

[karynnj]

4. I would say that it was an unintended flaw in the bill that was primarily responsible

Had the bill specified a single point that was to be considered the start of the General Election, it would have done what was intended - giving each candidate exactly the same amount of money. As it was given that Kerry had to stretch it over 13 weeks and Bush 8 (having been able to spend unlimited other money in the 5 between conventions.

It is fair to say someone on McAuliffe's team should have read M/F and seen this would be a problem, but it was the first year. They also set the date first and the Republicans took a historically late date to get near 911 (in NYC -- because No, they would never use a tragedy for political gain.) Where McAuliffe was asleep was that he and people on his staff should taken Kerry's floated proposal on "promising to accept" and pushed it in the media as correcting a flaw in a new law. They had in their favor that the law has a huge flaw adding one more benefit to all the others of being the party in power. Had they done this and it failed, it would have provided Kerry needed justification to opt out - without which he couldn't as a long time advocate have done. Here Kerry (or his team) were prescient and saw the danger, while McAuliffe was useless.

In addition - it was the spread to the MSM - which should not have happened other than in stories where they said that the attacks were out of line with the official record. It was NOT that they didn't have the facts.