The Huffington Post: Election Reform As A Way To Put Republicans On The Spot: pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which likely to be voted out of committee next Thursday .... 165 co-sponsors and at least 40 more supporters, would give matching money to candidates who agreed to raise only small donations. It even has three Republican co-sponsors. ...... So far in this election cycle, House and Senate candidates have raised $1.2 billion dollars, and the money arms-race only grows. ..... Under the proposed Act, a candidate who raised small donations from at least 1,500 small donors contributing no more than $100 each for a total of at least $50,000 could get matching money, at a 4-to-1 ratio ..... As much as $3 million in public financing would be available -- enough to be competitive on most House races. The money wouldn't come from tax dollars, but from a special levy on the auctioning of broadcast spectrumOf all things Pelosi could do between now and the November date, this would top the list. This is smaller than immigration reform and bigger than doing nothing. This is just the right size thing to do.
And with Charlie Rangel sleep walking to jail time after Bill Clinton sent out a robocall on his behalf right before the September 14 primary, the Dems badly need something that shows they stand on the side of politically clean. This bill would be it.
Pelosi can't do the stump speech thing that Obama does. That we should leave to Obama. But this House thing is Pelosi territory. She can get this done just like she got health care reform done and she got finance reform done.
The Dems need this bad.
The fear is not that the Tea Party might out think Obama. They have no plans to out think. Their plan is to numb the American people to not think anything. Their plan is to use racially coded language and imagery to get the American people to think that perhaps the guy in the Oval Office is not one of us.
If the Dems can turn this into an election about ideas and the future, that will lead to victory.
Obama does not need a victory in November. The Dems losing in November puts him in a better situation to win reelection in 2012. It is the American people who need Obama to win, who need Pelosi to be able to keep her job. And this election bill will help.
The Huffington Post: Obama Challenges Tea Party: 'Specifically, What Would You Do?': Obama, in no uncertain terms, accused the movement's members of refusing to talk in specifics. ..... We had two tax cuts that weren't paid for, two wars that weren't paid for. We've got a population that's getting older. We're all demanding services, but our taxes have actually substantially gone down." ..... What you can't do, which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side, is we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts .... Obama does seem to operate at his best when facing inherently adversarial questions (recall the positive coverage he received for going to a Republican conference in Baltimore during the height of the health care debate).
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