Colbert Goes There

The Colbert Report last night featured one of the most subversive and brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It's a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news and information on one of the most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media and political landscape, but I'll take this argument wherever I can get it. Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could - and probably will - lead to deregulating the entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any candidate of their choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing the consequences and even the flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood. Colbert explained that the 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn't even in the original ruling. But when the Chief Justice made an off-hand comment that the Court wouldn't hear an argument on whether the 14th Amendment applied to these corporations (saying, "We are all of the opinion that it does"), the court reporter wrote it into the ruling opinion, and the precedent has held ever since. And that reporter of the Supreme Court didn't only have ties to the railroad barons, he used to run one.

These are subjects you just never hear about in the American media, precisely because the American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from the corporate personhood rule and would stand to benefit more from deregulating elections so they could use their "speech" to buy candidates and fund their own with unlimited resources. And despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering the immorality and psychopathology of the corporation, "Corporations are legally people... they do everything people do, except breathe, die, and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River."

There's some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on the "TV Funhouse" bits from Saturday Night Live (he's one-half of the Ambiguously Gay Duo), including the infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy Theory Rock. Here are some of the actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):

It's a media-opoly
A media-opoly.
The whole media is controlled by a few corporations
thanks to deregulation by the FCC.

You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, and good ol GE?
They own networks from CBS to CNBC.
They can use them to say whatever they please,
and put down the opinions of any one who disagrees.
Or stuff about PCB's.

What are PCB's?
They come from power plants built by WestingHouse and GE.
They can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body,
but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about the nuclear industry [...]

But the bigshots don't care.
They're all sitting pretty.
Thanks to corporate welfare.
What's that now?

They get billions in subsidies
from the government.
It's supposed to create jobs,
but that's not how it's spent.

They pulled this cartoon from the rerun broadcasts and it never aired again.

Colbert didn't just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his "The Word" segment, but then had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how the expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:

COLBERT: If this goes through, if they decide in favor of the corporations here, what's going to happen to elections?

TOOBIN: Well, they will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or another, it'll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.

COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as the Hail to the Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn't do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if they win, does that mean that I retroactively won the election?

TOOBIN: I don't think it means that.

COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit and just have logos all over me and run for President as the sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?

TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.

COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.

TOOBIN: That's what's potentially the next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as the Court has held at various times, you can't prohibit a company from giving money. And then presumably the next step would be that you couldn't have limits on how much individuals could give either. That's the potential implication of this decision.

COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.

Here's the point. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, devoted his show to arcane campaign finance law to show the power of corporations to engage in a hostile takeover of government and extract virtually any law they choose, with no consequences for any wrongdoing. Consequently, the self-described populists on the right - aided by a hapless political class - are working their minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien "other" coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without the pernicious influence of rapacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.

But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.

That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

Absolutely. Set aside the fact that the Glenn Becks of the world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with the facts. It's the intensity of focus from the privileged on the poor, the disenfranchised, and yes, minorities, when measured against the influence and giant multinational corporations who are on the verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note. But not for the hucksters pushing the smears and the paranoids and racists who lap it up. They want to believe that black people have the power in America and they're coming for you and your children, so they can ignore the fact that they've been duped - that the ruling class has controlled the political machinery to keep them underfoot, and handed them welfare queens and illegal immigrants and all sorts of other members of the "lower orders" on which they can focus their attention. This boils down to a largely homogenous class of people not wanting their money, or anything, really, to go to people who don't look like them. "Illegals" or the undeserving poor need not apply. It's been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon's Southern strategy. And it allows a majority ruling class of whites, terrified that their stranglehold on the country is slipping away, to pretend that a race war is coming when it's the class war grinding them into the dust.

Matt Taibbi called it the peasant mentality. The powers that be get the lower classes to fight amongst themselves and split along ideological or tribal or other identifying lines, leaving room for them to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting their opponents, who are less homogenous and are made up of so-called "outsiders" of society - the poor, the disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; and painting the leaders of that party - whether it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as the head of a movement to destroy American culture. That's really basically it.

And all the while, both sides in DC studiously ignore the near-complete capture of the country by companies seeking only profit, and the corporate-owned media just follows the manufactured drama and goes mute on the critical stuff, such that it takes a comedian to shine a spotlight on this unexamined corner.

God Save This Blessed Court

It's getting so I try not to read anything with "Supreme Court" in the headline on the last week of June, because that's when all the most controversial cases come down, and given the current makeup of the Court it means "pound progressives into the cement" week in America.

The Court did rule that the death penalty shouldn't apply to child rapists, which, while a horrible crime, is not proportional to state-sanctioned murder. Sen. Obama short-circuited the inevitable Kitty Dukakis question by saying he disagreed with the ruling, but the fact that he did so on state's rights grounds is alarming. I don't know if Justice Kennedy made a well-argued case here, but I don't believe in the death penalty as a deterrent (I don't think rapists and murderers are all that rational) or as a properly applied system of jurisprudence (look at all the problems with cases at the state level) so anything that blocks its expansion is generally fine with me. I wish we had a court that would throw the whole practice out as cruel and unusual punishment and recognize that life in prison without possibility of parole is a pretty stiff punishment.

The other decisions were varying degrees of horrible. The Court stepped into the Exxon Valdez civil case in an activist fashion and lowered the damages to citizens affected by the oil spill. It's outrageous that the shattered lives on the Alaskan coast are worth $15,000, according to the law. And moreover, it shows corporations that they can appeal and appeal and appeal and they will eventually get their way in the highest court, where fealty to corporations is really the order of the day.

Today, in a 5-4 decision the Court overturned the Millionaire's Amendment which ruled as part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that candidates facing a rich, self-funded challenger can raise above the contribution limits if their opponent pumps millions into the race. The ruling also waives several disclosure requirements on the part of the self-funder. What is key here, a signal that this Court will rule against any and all public financing laws, is that Congress cannot seek to "level the playing field."

The argument that a candidate’s speech may be restricted in order to "level electoral opportunities" has ominous implications because it would permit Congress to arrogate the voters’ authority to evaluate the strengths of candidates competing for office. See Bellotti, supra, at 791–792 ("[T]he people in our democracy are entrusted with the responsibility for judging and evaluating the relative merits of conflicting arguments" and "may consider, in making their judgment, the source and credibility of the advocate"). Different candidates have different strengths. Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. Some are celebrities; some have the benefit of a well-known family name. Leveling electoral opportunities means making and implementing judgments about which strengths should be permitted to contribute to the outcome of an election. The Constitution, however, confers upon voters, not Congress, the power to choose the Members of the House of Representatives, Art. I, §2, and it is a dangerous business for Congress to use the election laws to influence the voters’ choices.

This sounds reasonable enough, but it could be the wormhole to end public financing and eliminate contribution limits. Considering that we're in the age of the Internet where the low-dollar revolution has taught that there need not be a reliance on big corporate money, that could be OK. But not if limits start getting removed. McCain-Feingold was reinforced by a 2003 ruling, so hopefully it'll remain robust. I'm worried that this will challenge "fair fight" funds in use in public money states like Arizona and Maine, where the publicly financed candidate gets extra money if a privately funded challenger spends above certain thresholds.

Finally, there's the Second Amendment case of the DC handgun ban, and in another 5-4 ruling the Court asserted an individual right to gun ownership and struck down the DC law. This is really the end of the gun issue as a political football; the 2nd Amendment has been defined. I don't know if it was defined correctly, but even such Constitutional scholars as Russ Feingold assert an individual right to bear arms. Here's Sen. Obama on the issue:

“I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures. The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view, and while it ruled that the D.C. gun ban went too far, Justice Scalia himself acknowledged that this right is not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe. Today’s ruling, the first clear statement on this issue in 127 years, will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.

“As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen. I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne. We can work together to enact common-sense laws, like closing the gun show loophole and improving our background check system, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. Today's decision reinforces that if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe.

Actually, that kind of strikes the right balance to me. What I do find striking is that not long ago, Justice Scalia assured us that the Court's ruling in Boumediene would "surely cause more Americans to be killed," yet he doesn't see the same consequence of allowing firearms in everyone's hands. Overall, we have a Court that bounces back between activism and restraint when it suits their ideological needs. It reinforces the need for a Democratic President to retain our core values and not continue on this path of a hard-right agenda in the highest Court in the land.

UPDATE: According to Phillip Carter, the ruling in Heller is pretty restrained, and most current forms of gun control wouldn't fall under it, outside of total bans.

He Broke His Word!!!

I guess the settled media narrative is that Barack Obama is just a weasel and a scoundrel for breaking his word - his WORD! - about public financing (even though that's a clever misinterpretation of his statements), and he's threatening to topple the whole public system by opting out for the general election. A system that gives us corporate PAC loopholes and 527 groups and all kinds of ways to use money outside the boundaries of donating to candidates. THAT system.

Somehow, the fact that John McCain is breaking the law doesn't come up:

I mentioned earlier today that it was quite a thing to see John McCain denouncing Barack Obama for breaking his word on public financing when McCain himself is at this moment breaking the law in continuing to spend over the spending limits he promised to abide by through the primary season in exchange for public financing. (By the FEC's rules, we're still in the primary phase of the election and will be until the conventions.)

I want to return to this subject though because this is not hyperbole or some throw away line. He's really doing it. McCain opting into public financing, accepted the spending limits and then profited from that opt-in by securing a campaign saving loan. And then he used some clever, but not clever enough lawyering, to opt back out. And the person charged with saying what flies and what doesn't -- the Republican head of the FEC -- said he's not allowed to do that. He can't opt out unilaterally unless the FEC says he can.

Every gallon of fuel on the Straight Talk Express, every rental of a venue for a town hall meeting, every donation phone call, every sandwich futher BREAKS THE LAW. And yet this guy is being sanctimonious about his honorable efforts in campaign finance reform?

It's not about money, it's about ACCESS. A $500 million dollar movement fueled by small donors doesn't create an unethical access problem because an individual $100 donor will have no pull with an Obama Administration. A lobbyist-fueled, PAC-fueled "movement" has a legitimate access problem - there are strings attached to their money. It doesn't matter who's "in" the system or who's "out". And anyway the system is insufficient to 21st-century campaigning.

Of course, to the traditional media, the point has nothing to do with campaign finance, which is a process story. It's about "your word" as they define it, and they will use this to set the narrative on Obama. Expect a lot of negative crap from the media for the next week.

UPDATE: As for the good government groups who are not pleased by the decision, they are advised to get over themselves. Outside of Sen. Feingold none of them have expressed much support for a real public financing system, so spare me the teeth-gnashing.

Barack Opts Out

Prepare for howls and shouts of "no fair, this means you'll have more money than us!" from the right upon this news.

Hi, this is Barack Obama.

I have an important announcement and I wanted all of you – the people who built this movement from the bottom-up – to hear it first. We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public-financing system for the general election. This means we’ll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds during the final months of this election.

It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections. But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.

Not that they'll stop, but it's hard for the McCain campaign to criticize this. They can talk about promising to participate in the public system and then opting out, but that's exactly what McCain did for the primary - illegally, to boot. They can talk about runaway spending in elections, but Barack just essentially added $80 million to the federal treasury. They can talk about asymmetrical warfare, but they'd get tripped up by the "money is speech" argument they've been pimping for years.

I believe in public financing, but Barack is right, the system is broken and easily gamed, and to ask him to unilaterally disarm and not rely on the strength of his movement of ordinary people for the sake of principle is absurd. I believe the idea of a "parallel public financing system" where the public and not special interests actually do the financing is another solution to the problem, and actually might get Republicans on the side of traditional public financing just so they can keep pace. At any rate, you can't throw an advantage like Obama would have down the river. This means that every swing state that's even a remote challenge is going to get massive resources. If Obama loses, it won't be for lack of cash.

This doesn't happen without the Internet, and the speed with which Obama caught its potential and used it to build a movement.

Oddly, McCain's already up with ads in some swing states, while Obama is dark. He now knows that the money will come in, so I would hope that he gets something on the air as soon as possible.

The California Report

As we head into this weekend's e-board meetings for the CDP, here's a few things I've noticed around the Web-o-sphere:

• It's a few days old, but I should mention that AB583, Loni Hancock's Clean Money bill for California elections, was amended. The latest is that it will be placed on the June 2010 ballot to enact a pilot program that would provide voluntary public financing in the 2014 Secretary of State's race. The original plan was to make the 2010 Governor's race clean money, along with a selected Assembly and Senate race. While shifting this to the lower-cost Secretary of State's race increases chances of passage, it basically puts off any chance at clean money for another four years. So it's bittersweet, to me.

• This Alex Kozinski situation has gotten a lot of noise on political blogs. Kozinski, the chief judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, was presumably caught with pornographic materials he stored on a public website, and now he's offering himself up for investigation. But the truth might be more sinister. As Lawrence Lessig explains, Kozinski may have been the victim of a smear campaign by a lone nut who accessed material that was private but unsecure. Worth a read.

• At the moment there are ten initiatives which have qualified for the November ballot; the latest would float $5 billion in bonds to subsidize purchases of clean-energy vehicles and research into renewables. I'm a bit worried that such a long ballot with an what will probably be record turnout is going to bring lots and lots of low-information voters to the polls making decisions on the state's future armed with little in the way of facts. In other words, just another California election.

• On Tuesday, all couples in the state will be permitted to marry regardless of gender. In anticipation, the New York Times ran an interesting article about marriage and gender relationships. Very interesting stuff.

• Fabian Nuñez endorsed Kevin Johnson in his runoff race for Sacramento Mayor. That race will happen in November. No word on Johnson's position on the allegations that refs gave the 2002 Western Conference Finals to the Lakers over the Kings, which may be a salient issue in Sac-town.

The Money Goes In, The Favors Go Out

This article by Frank Russo got me pretty depressed about the state of California politics.

There’s something amiss in the state of Sacramento—and it has something to do with the state’s banking and lending institutions and the stacking of committees that deal with them with legislators that are either weak kneed or just a bit overfriendly with the industry that they should be protecting us from.

What else is new?

Well, this afternoon, the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance, and Insurance, Chaired by Senator Michael Machado of Stockton, will be hearing two bills that have been gutted down behind a closed door process such that today’s public proceedings on them may amount to little more than a sham [...]

It’s difficult enough to get bills passed through the Assembly Banking Committee and the Assembly floor when going up against the behemoth banking industry which has a lot of spare change to throw around in legislative races and many high paid lobbyists scurrying about the Capitol.

It looks like AB 69 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu, originally a great bill, has been amended since it left the Assembly—and before today’s hearing—such that the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth by working to eliminate abusive financial practices, initially listed in support, has withdrawn that position.

Read the whole thing. The bottom line is that in this recent primary election special interest groups spent nearly $10 million, and a good bulk of them were business interests who are now playing inside Democratic primaries in traditionally liberal areas to sell low-information voters a bill of goods. This doesn't always work, but it works just enough to frustrate progress in Sacramento.

Lesson 3: The business lobby can influence Democratic politics, even in a largely minority district.

Former Assemblyman Rod Wright, a moderate, defeated liberal Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally -- reversing the pattern of leftist victories -- in a South Los Angeles Senate district after business donors invested roughly $1 million in Wright's campaign.

"Business has tended to stay out of black politics," says Sragow, who advises the business lobby. "But some black politicians ask, 'Why? We're always out looking for economic development in our districts.'

"The business community has decided it can't get a Republican Legislature, so it will play in districts where there's a Democratic candidate it can work with."

A major Democratic strategist has all but said that Don Perata shepherded along the candidacy of Rod Wright, and actually put it in terms that come very close to illegal coordination (note "a flurry of record spending by closely-aligned IE groups focusing all of their attention and ammo in one, concerted direction.")

This is the game. IE's are increasingly the only way to reach the electorate, as the low-dollar revolution has pretty much not reached the Golden State. So the Chamber of Commerce and industry groups fill the pockets of the politicians who, once elected, feel obligated to repay them. The US Constitution allows the right for anyone to petition their government for redress of grievances; outlawing lobbyists or the ability of merchants to consult their politicians is not tenable. What is tenable is to either create a parallel public financing system by employing the residents of the state to pay attention to local politics enough to fund progressive-minded candidates, or to bring clean money to California, where it's arguably needed more than anywhere else, and end the pernicious influence of special interests in state elections. Otherwise, you get a steady parade of mortgage relief bills that offer no relief.

Post-Mortem On the California Primaries

I think the results of yesterday's primaries had some good news and some bad, and also brought to light the depressing realities of California politics.

• Turnout was horrendous. These numbers will go up, but with all precincts reporting we're looking at 22% turnout, the lowest in recent memory, far lower than 2006 and 2004. There still is not much of a real political culture in California with respect to state politics, and I think that's something we have to recognize. I saw a lot of activism and citizen-led activity leading up to these primaries which made me somewhat hopeful, but it did not translate at the ballot box. Of course, with so many uncontested primaries there was little at stake. But as a measure of intensity of the electorate, there wasn't much.

• IE campaigns win elections. The outsized influence of IE campaigns is something we have to understand and work with. Even the races where, as Robert said, progressives won in state legislature primaries, there were in general a lot of IEs, funded mostly by labor, on their behalf. Rod Wright basically bought a seat in SD-25, with well over a million dollars of independent expenditures funded mostly by tobacco and business interests. And the size of Bob Blumenfield's victory in AD-40 suggests the importance of IEs. There isn't going to be a lot of appetite for reforming this from a set of state legislators who have IEs to thank for their positions in office. Clean money elections is obviously the killer app, and I'm glad Loni Hancock will be in the State Senate to carry the bill, but it's pretty depressing how easily these seats can be bought, particularly in low-turnout primaries where almost nobodyis paying attention.

• Measuring Congressional intensity. Looking at turnout numbers in the primaries isn't really a great measure of how the candidates will do in the general elections, but it's a good benchmark of base support. Among the winners were Bill Durston (within 8,000 votes of Dan Lungren) and Charlie Brown (just nipped by Tom McClintock in raw votes, but he got 42,000-plus out to vote for him in one of the highest-turnout elections anywhere). Among the losers? Well, pretty much everyone else. But Nick Leibham can't be happy about his totals, and he has a MAJOR activist support problem in the 50th district that he has to recognize and fix. Russ Warner did sort of in the middle, well enough but with the need for improvement. Considering she faced two challengers, Julie Bornstein didn't do too badly either.

• Incumbency can be defeated, but it's tough. Carole Migden is something like the first incumbent to be beaten in a primary in California in a dozen years. Mervyn Dymally was a sitting Assemblyman and something of a legendary figure so I'll call him a sort-of beaten incumbent. But it took lots of money to unseat these two and they had their share of political scandal. Otherwise, it's just real hard to get your message out.

• PDA is less than worthless. I love and respect my friends in Progressive Democrats of America for their advocacy of progressive causes. As an electoral engine, they are simply not a legitimate organization. Only Cheryl Ede can hold her head up high as a PDA-backed candidate, and honestly I think that had more to do with Leibham than her. Mary Pallant had PDA backing, more resources than the other two candidates in the race, and was thrashed by someone who suspended her candidacy and came back just weeks before the vote. It takes more than screaming about the system and emailing frantically back and forth and writing resolutions to build a power base, and PDA needs to learn in a hurry.

• The legislative battlegrounds. I'm very excited by Manuel Perez' win in AD-80, where he was the only candidate to show strength in all parts of the district (he actually finished a close second in both Riverside and Imperial Counties). He has a lot of momentum going into November against Gary Jeandron, the former sheriff of Palm Springs. And Democrats got about 5,000 more votes than Republicans in that seat. If Perez can unify the factions, he wins. AD-78 looks good, too. Marty Block squeaked out a win, and overall Democrats got over 8,000 more votes. Joan Buchanan did well in AD-15 and has a decent base of support - this will be a close race against Abram Wilson. I like what Alyson Huber did in AD-10, getting more votes than anyone on the ballot, Republican or Democratic. In AD-26, John Eisenhut, a farmer, got almost as many votes in his unopposed primary as Republican Bill Berryhill did in his. Ferial Masry is a longshot in AD-37, but the Democratic vote was within 5,000 of Republican Audra Strickland's total. Those are the 6 races that get us to 2/3.

In the State Senate, we'll see what becomes of the Morris write-in. But the good news was in SD-19, where Hannah-Beth Jackson got 47,000-plus votes to Tony Strickland's 50,000-plus. That's relative parity, and a good place to be. Because of the coattails Barack Obama will bring, I don't mind some deficit between Democratic and Republican numbers in the primary, because there will be lots and lots of new voters coming out to support the nominee in the fall who will pull the lever for downticket candidates.

That's what I've got for now, I'm sure we'll all be poring over the numbers in the days to come.

AD-40: Don't Ask Me About The Ad Campaign On Your Behalf, Son

San Fernando Valley politics are weird and dynastic. Bob Blumenfield used to work for Howard Berman; his campaign manager is Larry Levine, whose son Lloyd is running for state Senate; Lloyd's former chief of staff is Stuart Waldman, who's running against Blumenfield. This doesn't mean they're bad people at all. But there's a dynastic feel to Valley politics that is unsettling.

And now we have this.

Michael Blumenfield thinks his son Bob would do a fine job representing the San Fernando Valley in the state Legislature.

So he poured $120,000 into campaign advertising and, he said, never discussed it with his son, who lives in the same Woodland Hills neighborhood.

By law, such "independent expenditures" cannot be coordinated with candidates. They are most often used by business and union interests to mail brochures and air TV ads for or against candidates in the weeks before an election.

Donations to independent efforts are unrestricted. They have become increasingly common since 2000, when voters capped the size of direct donations to state politicians.

Observers say they've rarely seen a candidate's family run a campaign outside the control of the candidate, although in 2001, five brothers and other relatives and friends financed a $10,000 radio ad campaign on behalf of Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge.

This shows that the IE laws in this state are ridiculous. And it's not like Stuart Waldman is exempt; he has a massive IE on his behalf this cycle, too.

Laurette Healey is the grassroots progressive running in this race and would represent a break from the past. Her quote in the piece is notable.

One of them, Laurette Healey of Van Nuys, a former advisor to the state controller, said the controversy illustrates the need for taxpayer-funded campaigns.

"The vote in this district, and any district should not be determined by the size of someone's bank account," she said.

Indeed.

Cornering The Market On Bipartisanship

Shorter John McSame: the key is to trap the troops:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service [...]

Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

And while that might be great for the individual troop, it could be bad for the military, which is already under stress after more than five years fighting two wars.

On his campaign plane this afternoon, McCain said he and allies in the Senate are working on an alternative to the bill, but would only support something that included incentives to stay in the military.

"We are working on proposals of our own  I'm a consistent supporter of educational benefits for the men and women of the military," McCain said. "I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military as well as for people to join the military. ... I've talked a lot about veterans' health care, so we'll continue to talk about those issues and how to care for vets. I know I can do that, having been one."

This sets up the false choice that we can either give troops the educational benefits they deserve or have a military that isn't broken. Quite a few people enter the military for the educational benefits anyway, so an expanded GI Bill would help on the recruitment side, which is just as important as retention. Second, McCain's proposal is premised on the idea that you should make it virtually impossible to leave the military, forcing the economically disadvantaged to re-up. Republican policies have already made civilian life a struggle for the lower and middle classes; this is a proposal to break the trust of promising aid in exchange for national service. It's a symbiotic relationship that made this nation the most prosperous on Earth in the 1950s.

The way to repair the broken military is by leaving Iraq, not by holding current troops hostage by lessening their prospects in civilian life, or bribing mercenaries in foreign countries to sign up. And education benefits is not some sort of handout like welfare.

"We owe them something," Flavin said of his comrades. "They've given life, limb, everything there is to give. The people who bore the most pain and suffering are the people who could use these benefits."

McCain's figuring that he's going to need more soldiers for all those wars he's planning to start while in office. A military that makes good on its promises and is only used when absolutely necessary, after all, wouldn't be in Iraq. But what this shows, in the final analysis, is that the only "bipartisan" solutions that matter to McCain are his own solutions.

Two sources (neither at Common Cause) who spoke on condition of anonymity told me about McCain's attempts to remove former president of Common Cause, Chellie Pingree, from her job. Common Cause, a non-partisan group devoted to open government, was in some ways the field operative for McCain-Feingold in the Senate. But soon, according to my sources, Pingree saw that this regulatory scheme was too full of loopholes; in particular, she realized that it would lead to too much confusion about what various sorts of organizations could do or not do.

Like many others at the time, Pingree concluded that straightforward public financing was the answer. This wasn't what McCain wanted to hear. In an effort to remove Pingree, McCain's operatives made phone calls to Common Cause board members, funders, and anyone else they thought they could persuade or intimidate. McCain's efforts failed, but they showed that he was willing to attack an ally the moment her judgment veered away from his own [...]

One point to add to Cliff's account is that the line that McCain's agents took in trying to oust Pingree was that she had hurt the organization's "bipartisan credibility." Yet what constituted a loss of bipartisan credibility? It was McCain alone. If McCain was happy with the organization, they could call themselves bipartisan; if he turned on them because they didn't follow his agenda, they lost their bipartisan cover, because even if there were other Republicans who supported reform, he occupied the entire space. This was a staggering amount of power for one politician to have over an organization that was meant to be a watchdog on politics, and McCain used that power ruthlessly.

This is where I lost my admiration for McCain. And as I've watched McCain's modus operandi on other issues, such as the torture legislation, I've continued to see echoes of the Common Cause episode: Corner the market on bipartisanship. Move to claim the position of bipartisan intermediary, and then use that position ruthlessly to serve his own purposes or sell out his allies, because they are dependent on the reality or perception of bipartisanship. As a study in the art of exercising power, it's quite impressive. Until people see through it.

This works when you have a power center and are in demand. It's less effective when you're running a partisan campaign. Those bipartisan allies on military issues won't be bullied into supporting his vision of the GI Bill. Bipartisan allies on the environment know that McCain is shamelessly pandering to voters by calling for a gas tax holiday that would increase driving and greenhouse gas emissions. Bipartisan allies on campaign finance reform won't look kindly upon his campaign manager making the rounds of top lobbyists in DC. McCain's perception as a bipartisan leader will fade with these continued policy shifts, and he will morph into the picture of the current figurehead of the Republican Party.

Beer Money

Ooh, gimme some more of that McCain using his wealthy heiress' money to buy the Presidency.

The McCains' marriage has mixed business and politics from the beginning, according to an expansive review by The Associated Press of thousands of pages of campaign, personal finance, real estate and property records nationwide. The paperwork chronicles the McCains' ascent from Arizona newlyweds to political power couple on the national stage.

As heiress to her father's stake in Hensley & Co. of Phoenix, Cindy McCain is an executive whose worth may exceed $100 million. Her beer earnings have afforded the GOP presidential nominee a wealthy lifestyle with a private jet and vacation homes at his disposal, and her connections helped him launch his political career -- even if the millions remain in her name alone. Yet the arm's-length distance between McCain and his wife's assets also has helped shield him from conflict-of-interest problems.

Nearly 30 years before John McCain became the Republican presidential nominee, he worked in public relations at his wife's family company.

Within a few years of marrying Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, John McCain won his first election. He was new to Arizona politics and fundraising in the 1982 House race, and his campaign quickly fell into debt. Personal money -- tens of thousands of dollars in loans to his campaign from McCain bank accounts -- helped him survive.

Anheuser-Busch's political action committee was among McCain's earliest donors. Cindy McCain's father, James Hensley, and other Hensley & Co. executives gave so much the Federal Election Commission ordered McCain to give some of it back. McCain's campaign used Hensley office equipment such as computers and copiers, and Cindy McCain personally paid some of the campaign's bills.

Reform! Straight talk!

Now you have to add in how he dropped the first wife for Cindy and the sack of cash.

Coming at the time when McCain is magnanimously returning checks to donors and opting into the public system for the general election (because he can't raise that kind of money), the imagery of him using beer money to finance his political career is priceless. Let's see more of these articles please.

But He's A Maverick!

Marc Schmitt:

And, speaking of reform groups, have you seen the press release from Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters and U.S. PIRG urging Senator McCain to keep his commitment to public financing and stop manipulating the matching funds system for the primaries? No? Me neither. I'm sure it's coming any. day. now.

Cindy McCain is starting to hit Michelle Obama today over some rhetorical flourish. This would be an excellent way to fight back. Really, the major candidates could get a lot out of this. John McCain essentially tried to hold up the public financing system for personal welfare payments while talking about how committed he was to campaign finance reform. That's RIPE for an attack.

Also, this shows the failure of these good government groups, which find themselves as resistant to looking at reality instead of conventional narratives as the traditional media.

McCain's A Shameless Panderer - Not That He Means It

Nick Kristof is being a moron here, but there's a serious subtext to it. If John McCain can keep taking multiple positions on issues, or say one thing and do another with abandon, and the media will give it a pass, that's a tremendous detriment for the Democratic nominee. They're coating McCain with teflon.

With the arrival of the primaries, he has moved to the right on social issues and pretended to be more conservative than he is ... McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste ... McCain himself would probably acknowledge every one of these flaws, and he is a rare politician with the courage not just to follow the crowd but also to lead it. It is refreshing to see that courage rewarded by voters.

If you're going to read his mind, then sure, I guess you can find whatever you want in McCain. But the actuality kind of deviates from that. I mean, McCain has made Iraq the centerpiece of his campaign by lying about his record of calling for the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld and the repudiation of his war strategy, which he, um, didn't. He claims to be a leader on fighting climate change in the US Senate, yet he actually doesn't know anything about his own policy, including whether or not his plan has a mandatory cap on carbon emissions. He makes an argument about Barack Obama being all talk but having little in the way of accomplishments, and yet he actually doesn't have many substantial accomplishments to speak of. And in the one accomplishment he can name, campaign finance reform, this growing story about how McCain sought to have the taxpayers bail him out if he lost the election is only going to make him look even more bogus.

As The Washington Post reported on Saturday, John McCain's campaign struck a canny deal with a bank in December. If his campaign tanked, public funds would be there to bail him out. But if he emerged as the nominee, there'd be no need for public financing, since the contributions would come flowing.

It's an arrangement that no one has ever tried before. And it appears that McCain, who has built his reputation on campaign finance reform, was gaming the system. Or as a campaign finance expert who preferred to remain anonymous told me, referring to the prominent role that lobbyists have as advisers to his campaign, "This places McCain’s grandstanding on public financing in a new light. True reformers believe public financing is a way to replace the lobbyists’ influence, not a slush fund that the lobbyists use to pay off campaign debts."

Hilzoy has more. But none of this matters if everyone fails to report it factually. And Kristof's op-ed is a shot across the bow. If the truth on McCain is only going to be revealed in blogs and on Olbermann (who just had a nice segment on the campaign finance issue), then the impact will be severely blunted. This worries me.

McCain is going to be running on his integrity. The facts reveal that he has none. But those who would hold him accountable would rather spin it away. So, how to get around this? Unless the nominee is going to be forceful and basically demand that the press looks at the reality, I'm not sure.

Voting For Torture

This, of course, is just the latest example of John McCain's Double Talk Express. He once was a supposed champion of campaign finance reform, but now he's declined public money in his Presidential race, and has rejected the public financing model that he taped public service announcements in favor of in his native Arizona. He's talked about cleaning up Washington from corruption, yet he's taken $100,000 from Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig, from employees of the criminal Republican benefactor. He's described himself as some different kind of Republican, yet he shared the stage last night with noted "Jew-counter" Fred Malek, who worked for Nixon making sure there weren't too many Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To say nothing of McCain's other companions, Macaca George Allen and Tom "I believe in the death penalty for abortionists like me" Coburn.

But this really takes the cake. McCain's principled and honorable stances on torture were nothing but meaningless words. His actions tell a different story. There's no other way to look at it.

UPDATE: Here's McCain on the stump back in November:

"I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not 24 and jack bauer. Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. And I just came back from visiting a prison in iraq. The army general there said that technques under the army field manual are working and working effectively, and he didn't think they need to do anything else. My friends, this is what america is all about."

Whither McCain?

I've collected a bunch of articles over the past few days about John McCain and whether he will be able to reconcile the conservative coalition and unite the party. Generally, I think that in the end, hard-core Republicans will go to the polls to vote against Obama or Clinton. However, there is a concern that they won't be happy about it, won't work to get occasional voters out, and won't do what's necessary to get McCain elected.

I mean, despite the media's fluffing of McCain, the conservative media actively hates him (Bill Bennett and his disclosure problem excepted). There are so many news items that can be dug up to "prove" McCain's liberalism, in particular his flirtation with the Democrats after losing to Bush in 2000. Never mind McCain's actually flip-flopped back to the conservative position on practically all of his "maverick" legislation, and even on his signature issue of campaign finance reform, McCain has made liberal use of soft money, in addition to trying to get out of the Presidential public financing system. Here's Joe Conason.

Created after his failed presidential run in 2000, the Reform Institute is a hybrid between a domestic issues think tank and a tasty sugar teat for campaign staffers. Among its senior fellows is former Mexican Cabinet member Juan Hernandez, who also heads the McCain campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters. Other Reform Institute employees have included lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, long a member of the McCain inner circle and now his campaign manager.

The sweetest aspect of the Reform Institute -- aside from its commitment to research on immigration reform, campaign finance and other liberal concerns that the senator no longer finds so relevant -- is that its own financing is not subject to the regulations and disclosures of federal election law. In practice, that has meant not only that the McCain crowd could sop up subsidies from foundations run by liberal Democrats but that corporate donors with issues before the Commerce Committee could chip in a few bucks, too. Or a few thousand bucks, or even 50,000 bucks or more, like the executives of Cablevision (under the name CSC Holdings) and Echostar, communications firms with substantial issues at stake before McCain's committee.

Then there was that contribution from American International Group, whose executives had been quite concerned in 2000 about McCain's vow to stop AIG from profiting illicitly on insurance overcharges ripped off from the Boston "Big Dig" project. Sen. John Kerry got most of the blame for the demise of McCain's reform bill, which would have banned insurance giants like AIG from overcharging federal projects and reaping windfalls from investing that money. But it was actually McCain who killed his own bill -- and nobody seems to have checked back to discover that AIG later donated more than $50,000 to the Reform Institute. How much more? That might be a relevant question now, notably because Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the McCain backer who ran AIG in those days, has since been forced to relinquish the company under threat of criminal prosecution.

But this has proven cold comfort for the haters from the right on John McCain. James Dobson is now on record saying that he'll never support the Arizona Senator, and crackpot Richard Viguerie is asking for a NEW candidate to come in, Fred Thompson 2.0 as Josh Marshall calls in, to take McCain down.

I think the media-hungry conservatives want to hold on to their own power, and a McCain win in November is almost more debilitating to them than a McCain loss. They don't want to spread the "myth" that Republicans can win without their support; it would break the stranglehold they think they have on the party. Only they don't; McCain's Senate colleagues, who don't even like him all that much, are reassessing him, and certainly they'd fall in line behind him when he becomes the nominee. Establishment organs like the Wall Street Journal are twisting themselves in knots to argue for a McCain candidacy, arguing that he is needed because a lot of Supreme Court justices are old and will need to be replaced... um, isn't John 72 going on 100? Is that the argument you really want to make?

Conservative James Joyner took a look at this the other day, and came to some interesting conclusions:

Perhaps “conservatives” are now a minority, even among Republican primary voters? If so, given that there are virtually no conservatives remaining in the Democratic Party these days and that voters who aren’t aligned with either party are almost by definition non-ideological, that would mean that conservatives are a small minority, indeed, among the American electorate.

Alternatively, perhaps the definition of “conservative” has become so narrow and esoteric that it’s become virtually meaningless? [...]

The Conservative Movement has morphed from a handful of intellectual true believers trying to shape the debate into something approaching a civil religion with loyalty tests and a clericy that has the power to excommunicate.

John McCain was part of the 1980 wave that rolled into Congress on Ronald Reagan’s coattails. Indeed, McCain was among those Reagan was honored to stand with at 1974’s CPAC convention. But someone with an 82 percent lifetime ACU rating is considered a traitor to the cause. Much better, apparently, to flip 180 degrees on election eve and spout the right Party Line talking points.

As I wrote last year from CPAC, when throngs of so-called conservatives lined up for Ann Coulter’s autograph moments after she referred to John Edwards as a “faggot,” “Somehow, I can’t imagine Ronald Reagan being pleased.” Yet, the modern Conservative Moment seems to be dominated by the shrill nonsense of Coulter and Jonah Goldberg[*] and Michael Savage and Neil Boortz. In short, the Conservative Movement is no longer particularly “conservative” at all.

Yep. And they have a powerful need not to be marginalized. If so, the entire house of cards that is the wingnut welfare system comes crashing down. I have to conclude that the movement will actively work to stop John McCain in November, just as the establishment of the Democratic party worked to stop George McGovern in 1972, and once again, the derailment will come from the ideological right. Their ideas discredited, their movement endangered, they must resort to sabotage to save themselves.

Fabian's Law

The Fair Political Practices Commission is proposing new disclosure laws for travel expenses for legislators, which are obviously in response to revelations about Fabian Nuñez' lavish globetrotting. The regulations would require public proof that all activities had a legitimate government purpose, before the fact rather than after it comes out in the media.

Under a proposal made Monday by the state's ethics watchdog, detailed public disclosure of who benefited from such spending would be required of state officeholders, if given final approval next month. In addition, certain nonprofit groups involved in political campaigns would be forced to reveal their donors under a separate proposal by the Fair Political Practices Commission [...]

Under the new proposal, politicians and candidates would have to publicly list the gift recipients by name and the nature of the gift. They also would have to provide the dates of meals, the number of people at a meal and whether the diners included the politician's family or staff.

For out-of-state travel, politicians would have to disclose the dates and destination of travel and whether expenditures covered family and staff.

In all of these categories, the reports "shall state facts sufficient to demonstrate the political, legislative, or governmental purpose of the expenditure."

The rule also would require campaign account treasurers to make available to the commission, but not necessarily to the public, the names of all people who benefited from travel and meal expenditures.

The proposal was met favorably by the Nuñez camp as a way to improve accountability and increase sunshine. I can't see anyone, even the non-profits, finding this disagreeable unless they want to closely guard their own personal secrets. This is a common-sense measure to ensure taxpayers that their good name - and their money - is being used legitimately and to the benefit of the state.

Just Raise Charity For Charities

There's a simple solution to all of this. When politicians want to use their influence to raise money for charity, the money shuld go directly to the charity. They get the credit, the charity gets their money, everyone's happy. But that's not what's happening, and too many questions are being raised about just what the politicians are doing with the money.

The chairman of California's political watchdog agency says the growing practice of politicians soliciting millions for pet causes apparently is being abused for self-serving gain and needs to be reined in.

"If I could, with the stroke of a pen, I'd do away with it," said Ross Johnson, chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.

"It's a huge end run around the contribution limits that the people of California voted for" in Proposition 34 seven years ago, he said.

Payments "at the behest of" should clearly be abolished. There's absolutely no reason for them. If you want to look like a good politician by raising money for charity, let the charity have it directly. Otherwise, you get stuff like this.

More than $5 million has been donated at politicians' request both this year and last – far more than any year since disclosure began nearly a decade ago.

The money is meant for public benefit and cannot be used for campaigning, but some has been spent in ways that enhance a politician's image, such as for billboards or television ads.

Days before a fiercely contested Democratic primary last year, for example, John Garamendi solicited $300,000 in public-benefit funds for a TV advertisement in which he touted his performance as insurance commissioner without specifically asking voters to support him in his bid for lieutenant governor, a post he ultimately won.

Just cut it out. It's nonsense.

Hope There Are Some Heroes On The Federal Election Commission

Apparently getting Doritos to sponsor your candidacy, even if it's a joke candidacy, could get you in legal trouble.

If his campaign plays out the way he's indicated that it will, Comedy Central and Colbert's sponsor, Doritos, could be violating federal laws that bar corporations from backing political campaigns, election law experts say.

"How serious can you get about running as a joke?" said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign finances. "The Federal Election Commission doesn't have a great sense of humor."

Federal law bars corporations from contributing to candidates, either through donations or in-kind contributions such as free use of goods or services.

Media organizations are permitted to feature presidential candidates in covering campaigns.

But no precedent exists for a television network promoting and fostering a candidacy of one of its own talk-show hosts, said Lawrence M. Noble, a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission. And comedian Pat Paulsen's 1968 candidacy predated current campaign finance regulations.

"The real problem comes in the fact that he actually has his own show, talking about his campaign, paid for by a network," Noble said. "These are the kind of things on slow days you'd debate until the late afternoon at the FEC, but there are serious questions that come up. In theory, he could end up having some campaign finance problems." [...]

On Thursday's program, he held up what he said was a letter from a Washington election lawyer, and made the legal framework part of his schtick.

"In accepting corporate money, I promise to respect federal election laws the same way I respect the must-shower-before-swimming law at the Y," Colbert said. "As a candidate, I am under no obligation to promote the zesty, robust taste of Doritos brand tortilla chips, regardless of how great a snack they may be for lunchtime, munch time, anytime."

He also said that, because of election laws, Doritos would technically be sponsoring not his candidacy but his program's coverage of his candidacy.

"It's illegal for my crunch money here to pay for the campaign, but it is legal for it to pay for my show, and the show can report on my campaign," he said. "Host: 'Eat them.' Candidate: 'I just happen to like 'em.' "

Maybe the good thing about a Colbert candidacy is that it will shed a light on our farcical campaign finance laws. This is obviously a promotional stunt, and something has to allow for that in the new-media age. At the same time, since Colbert so easily cleared the loophole allowing virtually unlimited corporate donations, maybe that should tell the FEC something, too.

In other news, Colbert's already polling at 13% in a three-horse race with Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. I thought that terrible Robin Williams film "Man of the Year" was fiction; maybe not.

Nunez-gate: Skelton Weighs In

The grand poohbah of the Sacto press corps, taking his whacks.

Memo to editor:

Water is a huge issue right now in the California Legislature. So to broaden my perspective, I propose traveling to Italy to study the ancient Roman aqueduct.

It's even older than the state water project. Both are outdated, and I could put this all into context for our readers.

There's a convenient hotel in Rome at the top of the Spanish Steps where I can stay for $730 a night.

Best, Your stir-crazy Sacramento columnist.

He goes on like that for a while. If money is the mother's milk of politics, money scandals are the mother's milk of political columnists.

Skelton also makes the point that none of this would happen with public financing, but he dismisses is as an unrealizable goal, at least for now, because anything that reduces the amount of spending on political activities will be met with fear and loathing by the political establishment. He invokes the golden rule: "If you can't explain it, don't do it." And then, at the end of the column, in comes Fabian to explain:

After my deadline -- after I'd written this column -- Nuñez called to explain.

He "became a hit around the world" after his global warming bill passed last year, the speaker said, and received many foreign invitations. "The dollar is pretty darn weak in Europe these days" and that runs up expenses, he added. He also buys lots of gifts for dignitaries, staffers and other legislators.

Nuñez defended paying for all this with political money rather than tax dollars. "My conscience wouldn't allow me to do that, so I use my campaign funds. That's between me and the people who contribute."

But what about the wine trip? The French organized it.

"I know this stuff doesn't look good. But it's legitimate. I did not do anything wrong."

He didn't say he was pretty much middle class in this one, so the explanations are getting better. But just because you "became a hit" doesn't mean you actually have to show up around the world. In some ways, this explanation is far worse, actually. It's almost an admission that these activities had nothing to do with California government business.

Note also the plea to his own conscience, that he had to protect the taxpayers from paying for these trips and instead hit up corporate donors who will in turn impact legislation that will bankrupt the taxpayers many times over.

The Hardening Narrative on Nuñez And Its Implications

Steve Lopez takes his whacks today.

"There's not too big a difference," Nuñez told Vogel, "between how I live and how most middle-class people live."

Hands down, it's the quote of the year.

I'm not sure what middle-class people Nuñez is talking about, but I'm worried that he's spending entirely too much time with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Could the speaker be talking about Brentwood's middle-class?

That's the kind of quote that haunts people throughout their political career. And Lopez connects it to fears of buying access that should worry all of us, especially in light of the special session.

It's the democracy we've all been waiting for in Sacramento. Gulfstreams, Louis Vuitton office supplies and nose-thumbing responses to inquiring constituents.

Given Nuñez's refusal to explain the specific purpose of his travels, Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is biting her nails, hoping Nuñez wasn't sampling fine wine with players who have pumped $5.3 million into the "Friends of Fabian Nuñez" campaign kitty.

"The first question that comes to mind is whether the health insurance industry was sponsoring the speaker's lavish trips, as he's now debating the future of the health market in California," Balber said.

She notes that Nuñez's travel fund has received $136,000 from health insurers and their lobbyists. And Nuñez is working with Schwarzenegger ($719,000 and counting from health insurers and their lobbies) on a health insurance reform bill that would require every Californian to buy coverage, but wouldn't require insurers to cap the cost.

Certainly the insurers would love to raise a fine bottle of red to the passage of such a bill, and Nuñez has been known to pop the cork on crushed grapes that run as high as $224 a bottle.

I think we have to look at the root causes of something like this. I believe it directly comes out of a static Democratic Party, with its extreme gerrymandering and zealous antipathy to primaries. Matt Stoller has an incredible post today about the broken market for Democratic primaries, and I think it's directly relatable to what we're seeing in California.

Let's go through why primaries are essential vehicles.

One, primaries create tremendous efficiencies for activists, concerned citizens, and outside groups. Spending inordinate amounts of time calling and writing Democratic members of Congress or advertising to get their attention, all to get them to do what they should be doing anyway is incredibly costly, and is a direct result of a lack of real political costs to bad faith actions that would be imposed by a healthy series of primary challenges. The lack of primaries is in effect a tremendous negative feedback loop for activism, dampening all of our focused energy as a piece of insulation does summer heat.

Two, democracy is a core Democratic value. The right to vote, and have that vote counted, is meaningful because it allows citizens to generate buy-in to their civic structures. This is as true within a party as it is within a country (and as true within a union, club, corporation, or church). It's no accident that the Democratic Party gained tens of thousands of new registrants in 2006 in Connecticut. Democratic structures make our party and our country stronger, whether that's by generating Democratic volunteer or donor lists in a hot primary that can be moved over to a general election or letting a festering intraparty fight get resolved by putting it to the voters.

Three, a lack of primaries disenfranchises Democratic voters. John Tanner, who has not faced a real race in years, or Lynn Woolsey, simply do not have to represent their constituents. They may choose to do so, but they do not have to. And their constituents have no recourse. Their constituents are cut out. In that case, why be a Democrat? Why volunteer for Democrats, or donate if the party itself isn't democratic?

Four, primaries are a check on calcification and corruption within the party. The only way to keep Congressional representatives responsive to party activists and voters and not corrupted by their control of the party is to have regular mechanisms for feedback by activists and voters. Joe Biden obviously should be challenged for his Senate seat in 2008, but it's not likely to happen, and this was true for Tom Carper and Dianne Feinstein in 2006.

All of these are key elements of the situation we're seeing in California. It's hard to keep activism high when the legislature in Sacramento seems like such a closed system, even to rank-and-file legislators. We have a Big Five and a Little One Hundred And Sixteen, and this is a discouraging development. There is also no excitement generated by Democrats throughout the state, no opportunities for registering new voters and bringing new ideas to the process. The legislators have little belief that they can be beaten once they first get elected, so they don't feel any need to respect the wishes of their constituents. And the end result is a calcified Democratic Party with a shrinking base, which has ceded much of the inland areas in the state and is concerned primarily with holding on to their fiefdoms. Plus, the opportunities for corruption and ethical lapses, as we see in this case, are amplified.

This is obviously a drastic reading of what goes on in the state. We have decent majorities and have passed some praiseworthy policies in recent years. But the ability to go further and do more is always suppressed, and political power is centralized among a select few. Just as there is a narrow establishment class in Washington that discourages inter-party debate and primary efforts, the same class exists in California, as the establishment appears to abhor the idea of even growing the majority by competing in "red" areas, let alone taking a hard look at the seats under Democratic control to judge whether there is an effective legislator working to advance our interests and values. This is not about purging the party and shrinking the tent, this is about saving the party from itself, as they are shrinking their own tent and dampening activism. The demographics are working for the party in many ways, but also against the party, as job growth moves inland into fast-growing areas like Riverside and Ontario in the south, and districts like CA-11 up north.

We are squandering an opportunity to build a strong legislative majority that can move forward real change by investing power in the hands of an unaccountable few and watching idly as they are tempted by powerful interests to use that power to do little more than protect the status quo. One of the few ways to change this paradigm is to support any efforts to make strong challenges in the primaries to hold these power brokers accountable. Another is to take a long look at the effort to entrench power further by changing the term limit law in a way to keep the leadership in charge for another 6-8 years. Regardless of whether or not you agree with term limits as an abstract concept, you have to ask yourself if it's advisable to create a situation that would again centralize power, calcify the party leadership and reduce efforts for real change.

(Obviously, meaningful campaign finance reform, which would remove the money barrier to contested primaries, is a great vehicle to kick-start this process.)

Edwards and Public Financing

Kos makes a very compelling case that John Edwards' decision to accept public financing is a dangerous one. Obviously Clinton and Obama are sucking up all the big-money cash, and with Edwards running a campaign against powerful entrenched interests like lobbyists, it makes ideological sense for him to limit spending and take the public money. But there is an element of unilateral disarmament to it. The spending limits are sharp and the loopholes you have to play to get around them are very difficult. And the biggest conundrum is that, should Edwards clear these hurdles and become the nominee, he'll have six months between the primary and the general election to wait until general election public money comes in. This is what killed John Kerry in 2004, having no money to respond to the litany of attacks like the Swift-Boaters before the convention.

Here's Markos' take:

Short term, this decision is probably necessary and good. The problem I have with this is what happens if Edwards pulls this thing off and locks this thing down on Feb. 5? [...]

What if they end up spending more to wrap up their primary than their current plan indicates. If polling suggests, pre-Feb. 5, that they can win California or Florida with a last-minute push, are they really going to say, "well, we can't spend those millions because of our long-term Summer plan!" Hell no, they'll do whatever they need to do to win, and you couldn't begrudge them that decision.

Except that we end up with a broke or seriously underfunded nominee with six months before the convention. The Edwards campaign argues that the DNC can pick up the slack. And sure, Edwards could funnel money he can't raise to the DNC to act as a proxy. But as we've seen since forever, the RNC always grossly outraises and outspends the DNC. That could change next year, of course. But again, it's a gamble.

And that's the bottom line. If all goes according to plan, then this might not be an abject disaster. But as everyone knows, no battle plans survives contact with the enemy. And I can't personally support a primary candidate that could put us in a difficult position for an entire six months leading up to the fall general election. It's just simply too dangerous.

I still believe that in a Democratic year, with the stain of Bush all over the Republican Party, you can still vote your conscience and choose the candidate that best matches your vision. But this is a calculated risk. I believe in public financing, and the progressive movement certainly wouldn't let a nominee hang out to dry, but going up against the GOP machine with just public money really is bringing a knife to a gunfight. It doesn't bode well for Edwards.