John McCain has been the butt of some humor lately on account of his comparatively spartan fund-raising in February. In that month the Clinton campaign raised about $35 million, Obama raised an undisclosed amount "significantly more" than that, and McCain pulled up the ass-end of the parade with $12 million. Bad news for McCain, you say, showing a stunning mastery of the obvious. It certainly isn't good news (although it's less daunting than it appears.*) I'm more amazed at how completely we have managed to ignore the fact that raising $12 million in 29 days is now considered laughable.
I am very repetitive in my criticism of the exponentially rising cost of our elections. It's just absurd, and I don't think most Americans realize just how absurd it is.
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Twelve years later, two Democratic candidates raised comparable or greater amounts in a single month of the primary season.
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If the increase in campaign costs was linear, each presidential election would be 10 or 20 percent more expensive than its predecessor. Instead the costs are essentially doubling every four to eight years. After Bush and Kerry combined to spend half a billion dollars in 2004 (!!!
) I've been telling everyone who will listen (and students who have no choice but to listen) that this is going to be our first billion-dollars-on-the-books* election. With the three major candidates jacking up $100 million in fuckin' February, my billion-dollar estimate is probably going to be very wrong. That is pretty damn common, but I didn't think I'd miss low on this one.
*Clinton and Obama are spending huge portions of that to battle one another, so in practice a lot of this money "cancels out" money raised by the opponent. Nonetheless, in the abstract McCain has to be terrified that the combined Democratic fund raising in one month was seven goddamn times his total. As in McCain = x, Democrats = 7x. Ouch.
**That's actual "hard money" raised directly by the campaigns and on the books with the FEC. Counting the various soft money and "independent expenditures" by other groups, more than $2 billion was spent in 2004 and I'd expect $5 billion to be spent this year.
JDryden says:
What's curious is not so much where the money comes from, but the question whether those who give this money are truly getting a decent return on their investment. I suspect–and I have absolutely *no* evidence for this beyond my intuition, but hey, if that's good enough for FOX NEWS, why not for me?–that the exponential growth involved in investing in the President has a lot to do with the growth of the global economy. People who pay attention have often noted the degree to which the President has actually relatively little power, domestically–he can't do anything that the Congress doesn't OK, and they hold the purse-strings. But internationally, it's much more his ball-game, and thus sweetheart deals can be cut as part of international 'diplomatic policy'…so multinationals have more and more incentive to buy their candidates. Am I completely wrong? (If so, I'll just fall back on the FOX playbook and point out that you're still living in a pre-9/11 fantasy world.)