NY23: Ordinary Americans make miracles happen; start doing what you can

Letter to the editor, Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times:

It has recently come to my attention that the Republican Party bosses met behind closed doors to select the candidate for the special election to fill the vacancy created by the appointment of John McHugh to the office of Army secretary.
They selected Dede Scozzafava, a liberal member of the state Assembly. She received the same Planned Parenthood award that was awarded to Hillary Clinton. With President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushing an anti-life agenda through the House, we do not need another pro-abortion politician in Washington.
Let's send a message: both the Democratic and Republican candidates are pro-abortion, but the Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is pro-life. On Nov. 3, pull the lever for Doug Hoffman on the Conservative line and cast a vote for life.
Ann Dougherty

To repeat what I wrote in "Memo to the Grassroots":

One of the problems that hinders grassroots activists from making a difference is that they see problems so big that they think to themselves, "What's the point? I'm just one person. I'm not important. Why waste my time? There's nothing I can do anyway." . . .
The reason the GOP national leadership is so out of touch is because too many grassroots conservatives don't know how to fight back against the RINOs and sellouts and self-serving GOP headquarters staffers who collect fat paychecks for screwing up over and over again. . . .

If you haven't read that essay yet, you should do so now. Because if all you're going to do is sit around whining, "What can I do?" you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Don't become discouraged and start telling yourself that you can't do anything to fight back. Doing the little things you can do -- like sending short, clear, well-reasoned letters to the editor of your local paper -- is the key to successful grassroots activism. "Steady licks kill the Devil," they say.

Ms. Dougherty's letter boiled down to its essence a key point about the NY23 special election, namely that it was the "lords of the backroom" who picked Scozzafava as the GOP candidate. How many people in the 23rd District are really aware of that dirty little secret? With that one letter, then, Ms. Dougherty may have struck an important blow for Hoffman by helping inform local readers about the real story of this election, namely the battle between the grassroots and the out-of-touch Republican elite.

That's just one example of the difference the Ordinary American can make, if you'll ignore those pessimistic Eeyores who are always spreading negative gloom and doom by telling you there's no point trying, because you're certain to lose. If Doug Hoffman had listened to that kind of advice -- when he was growing up poor, pumping gas at age 14 to earn money -- he never would have become a successful businessman, and he sure wouldn't be running for Congress today.

The Doug Hoffman campaign collected $116,000 online in a single day last week. This morning, I spoke with a campaign source who told me that the overwhelming majority of those donations were in the $20-$50 range.

Think about that. Raising a six-figure sum -- in one day! -- with the average donor contributing less than $35. If you haven't kicked in yet, what are you waiting for? And if you've already given the Hoffman campaign $20 or $50, how about another $10 or $20 just to say, "Keep up the good work?"

HOFFMANIA: CATCH IT!

Our complete coverage of the NY23 special election

(Cross-posted at Hot Air Greenroom and Not One Red Cent.)

NY23 BULLETIN: Doug Hoffman campaign raised $116K online Thursday

Doug Hoffman campaign spokesman Rob Ryan just called to give me that news.

UPDATE: Given previous reports that the campaign had raised $210,000 in the week ending Tuesday, and estimating more than $30,000 for Wednesday, this puts the Hoffman campaign's online fundraising at about $400,000 in the past nine days.

Want to make it an even $500,000? Every little bit helps.

UPDATE II: Democrat Bill Owens already raised more than $500,000 before this week. If conservatives want to let the Democrats buy this election, that's up to you. Otherwise . . .

Well, I've got to get back on the road if I'm going to make it to Hoffman HQ in Saranac Lake this afternoon. Expect Jimmie Bise to be posting further updates as I report by phone.

Our complete coverage of the NY23 special election

Obama's big donors

Remember all that hype about small donors giving $20 on the Internet? Forget it:

Nearly 100 wealthy families and power couples contributed at least $100,000 each to help Barack Obama over the past two years, creating an elite set of donors to whom the president-elect repeatedly turned in financing his campaign, transition and inauguration, a Washington Post analysis shows. . . .
The families gave to as many as five committees, records show, and 27 of the 94 families also bundled money from others, collecting millions of dollars on top of their personal donations.
Among the supporters were well-known families such as the Rockefellers, as well as lesser-known backers such as New Yorker Frank Brosens, a leader in the hedge fund industry, who raised $500,000 for Obama's campaign and inauguration in addition to the $182,000 he gave with his wife, parents and three sons.
High-profile donors include Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, who gave $163,900. . . .
Twelve members of the Rockefeller extended family gave a total of $316,000. Hotel magnate and former Maryland lawmaker Stewart Bainum Jr. and 13 members of his family gave $236,000.

Remember this, the next time someone tries to tell you Republicans are "the party of the rich."

UPDATE: Ann Althouse:

Now, should we be upset, and if we are, what are we upset about and is it not poetic justice that John McCain came out the loser?

Hey: Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bob Barr!

Democrats: Party of the rich

Barack Obama's campaign raised somewhere north of $640 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The latest available figures are only through Oct. 15, and it's likely the final total will be nearly $700 million. By comparison, John McCain's campaign raised $370 million, and as the CRP notes:

Because McCain opted into the public financing system during the general election, he faced an $84 million limit on what he could spend, putting him at a huge disadvantage compared to Obama, who raised $66 million more than that in September alone.

Just in case you're wondering, the Republican National Committee's expenditures could not have possibly made up the gap between McCain's $84 million and Obama's fundraising, which was about $150 million in September alone. The RNC raised only $336 million in the entire 2-year cycle.

If you think about it, the Obama campaign was the biggest growth industry in America over the past two years. Not all of the campaign's expenditures have been fully itemized, but they spent more than $160 million on TV ads.

In discussions of "what went wrong" for the GOP this year, the Democrats' massive financial advantage in the 2008 cycle has to be taken into account.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

They really are desperate

John McCormack calls it the most implausible Palin smear yet, and it is rather odd:

The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her.

As McCormack points out, Bradley's opposition to ANWR drilling is the same is Joh McCain's opposition to ANWR drilling, and Sununu has a 100% right-to-life voting record, so that doesn't make sense at all.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, I don't remember Palin putting in plugs for local Republican officials when I saw her in Ohio and Pennsylvania. This routine of name-checking local officials at the beginning of a speech is essential to the presidential campaign business. (You remember Joe Biden's infamous "stand up, Chuck" moment with Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham.) And if Palin were indeed averse to that sort of political routine, it might lend credibility to this tidbit in the Newsweek story:

"McCain's advisers had been frustrated when Palin refused to talk to donors because she found it corrupting . . ."

Here, now, is a charge that would be gravely serious, if true. Political campaigns and political parties live or die by fundraising, and schmoozing donors is a basic function of what candidates do.

The candidate is handed a list of names and numbers with a bit of biographical information about each, and the amount of their previous donations, and he picks up the phone and starts "dialing for dollars" as it is called. And then, out on the trail, at each rally, there is a private VIP reception where the top local donors are rewarded with face-time and a chance for a grip-and-grin photo with the candidate.

This is the inescapable reality of politics, and the best politicians tend to excel at this kind of stuff. Over the course of time, these kind of personal contacts add up to a solid base of support. Bill Clinton famously built his political career in Arkansas by compiling a file of 5"x7" cards with donor/supporter information.

Surely, Palin has not succeeded in politics without knowing how important it is to do all this, but if -- as the implausible Newsweek story asserts -- she didn't know it, somebody had better wise her up in a hurry. She will be (or at least, ought to be) the No. 1 attraction at Republican fundraising events in 2009, an eviable opportunity to build her base of support among GOP bigwigs, and she needs to make the most of it.

Obama buries McCain in ads

According to Neilsen, measuring "ad units":

• Ohio: Obama 13,289; McCain 5,606
• Pennsylvania: Obama 9,546; McCain 4,740
• Florida: Obama 15,887; McCain 4,662

It is pointless for Republicans to bleat about media bias at a time when Obama is out-advertising McCain by more than 3-to-1 in Florida, and more than 2-to-1 in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Obama raised $150 million in September. That's $5 million a day, which means that in the first 17 days of the month, Obama had raised $85 million -- more than McCain received in federal matching funds to last him from Labor Day to Election Day. There is no Republican campaign "strategy" that could possibly overcome such a lopsided cash advantage by the Democrat.

Flaming skull at Ace's

Whenever he pulls out the skull, you know it's something big: Apparently, Team Obama disabled a verification feature in its online donation softway so that anyone (even "John Galt") can give money anonymously, or rather pseudonymously, or at least without a verified name and address.

Hey, man, $5 million a day, what do they care if it comes from "DooDad Pro" and "asdfadfqrew"?

Biden: Losing the bigot vote?

Democrats say the darnedest things at San Francisco fundraisers:

As Election Day looms just over two weeks away, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Saturday that with Republicans firing "vicious" and "dangerous" attacks at Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voters are "having a difficult time" opting for the man who would become the nation's first African American
president.
"Undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African American president in the history of the United States of America," the Democratic vice-presidential nominee said at a San Francisco fundraiser Saturday evening. "So we need to respond. We need to respond at the moment, immediately, not wait, not hang around, not assume any of this won't stick."

(Via Jack M. at AOSHQ.) The Obama campaign hoovered up $150 million last month, they're outspending McCain as much as 4-to-1 in TV advertising, and Biden goes to San Francisco to whine, "Give us more money, because undecided voters are a bunch of racist crackers."

Obama: $150 million in September

Crushing:

The Obama campaign announced this morning that it had raised a record $150 million last month, and had added 632,000 new donors to its total.
The amount shattered the campaign’s previous record from August. The McCain campaign also had a record-breaking month in August, but is now operating with the $84 million provided by public financing for the general cycle and assistance from the Republican National Committee under certain limits.

In a single month, then, Obama collects nearly twice what the McCain campaign collected in matching funds.

According to the New York Times, the Obama campaign has spent $145 million on TV advertising to McCain's $90 million -- a $55 million advantage for the Democrat.

Beverly Hills Obama

Here's what you get for $11 million:

The $11 Million Victim

Obama goes to Hollywood, raises a record $11 million and plays the victim:

"A lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. Why is this as close as it is? And what's going on?" Mr. Obama said, speaking to about 300 people over dinner at the Greystone Mansion. "We always knew this was going to be hard -- this is a leap for the American people."

Oh, it's so hard to get elected when you're raising $66 million a month and the major media are completely in the tank for you. It's so hard when you're on the cover of Time magazine seven times in one year. It's so hard when Us Weekly is doing such vicious investigative journalism about you.

It's so hard when you get a sweetheart book deal at age 27. It's so hard when you're appointed to the board of a $49 million education reform project at age 34. It's so hard when the Chicago Tribune goes to court to have your Republican opponent's divorce records made public, so he's forced to drop out and you get a free ride into the U.S. Senate.

Maybe those rich Hollywood friends of yours are buying into this victimhood tale, buddy, but I think the ordinary American voter is gagging from the odor of rancid self-pity.

UPDATE: And, as notorious hatemonger Michelle Malkin points out, Obama's not only a victim, he's a half-black victim. Why does this make Michelle a notorious hatemonger? Because only liberals like Jack Cafferty are allowed to obsess over Obama's race:

Shorter Jack Cafferty: "We know you racist crackers won't vote for a black man, which means it's time to do our umpteenth special segment pointing out that Obama is, in fact, a black man."

RNC beats DNC 10-to-1

Cash on hand totals:

• Republican National Committee: $75.2 million
• Democratic National Committee: $7.7 million

Team Obama's sucking up all the liberal money, and when he spends it, it's gone. And a lot of overhead is involved in fundraising, so much of what liberal donors are paying for is for Obama to hire more fund-raising operatives.

Meanwhile, Team Maverick is less than two weeks away from collecting -- in a single lump-sum payment -- $84 million in public financing. By then, there will be barely eight weeks remaining to spend the whole amount, which means the McCain campaign will be operating on a budget of $10 million a week, even while the RNC still has another $75 million to play around with.

All in all, you're going to see more than $20 million a week of coordinated Republican activity from Labor Day through Nov. 4. So much for McCain-Feingold as way to "get the big money out of politics."

TicketGate: Hope for sale

Team Obama depicted the Invesco Field speech as an "open convention" -- a typical faux-populist gesture -- and then the truth is discovered:

Barack Obama's big-money donors are being offered premier seats to his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High, according to information obtained by The Denver Post.
Top fundraisers for the "Obama Victory Fund" were offered club-level seats through the end of Monday for $1,000 apiece. Also, the biggest donors to the Democratic National Convention's host committee and select VIPs are getting ultra-plush suites at Invesco.
The Obama campaign and its partners at the Democratic National Convention Committee have 8,300 club-level seats. If all were purchased, it could mean a cash infusion of $8.3 million.

Change. Not small change, either.

UPDATE: $8.3 million will go a long way toward providing "street money" in Philadelphia, I suppose.

Obama: $51 million July

When Team Maverick held a conference call Friday to announce they'd raised $27 million in July (plus another $26 million by the RNC), I wrote:

Probably Team Maverick expects Obama to announce huge numbers for July, and so they wanted to get ahead of the story by putting McCain's numbers in context of the large RNC/state GOP fundraising operation.

Prophetic powers vindicated:

Sen. Barack Obama raised $51 million in July, falling short of his one-month record, but raising enough to end the month with $65.8 million in the bank -- a formidable number for the middle of the summer.

By the way, somebody want to explain to me again how Republicans are "the party of the rich"?

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

McCain: $27 million in July

On a conference call this morning, John McCain campaign manager Rick Davis talked about the Republican fund-raising operation, and said the campaign raised $27 million in July and completed the month with $21 million cash on hand.

The RNC will report raising $26 million in July, ending the month with $75 million cash on hand, Davis said.

In addition, Davis said, GOP state committees in key states have another $100 million cash on hand. Overall, the McCain campaign feels that they are in a very competitive position with the Barack Obama campaign. Beginning Sept. 1, the Republican will have more than $80 million in federal matching funds.

Ed Morrisey of Hot Air asked if Obama's foreign trip had affected fundraising, and Davis said "not so much in July as in August" there had been "an uptick in Internet fundraising" as a result of the success of a YouTube video that got over 1 million views.

Davis noted that both parties are holding their conventions relatively late this year, so that there are only 10 weeks from the start of the conventions until Election Day, which he called "one of the most intense political periods we've ever seen."

Davis assessed the current situation as a "pretty even race," saying that the McCain campaign has "effectively consolidated" the Republican base, remains "competitive with independent voters," and is doing well with "disaffected Democrats."

UPDATE: Showing his alarm over the fundraising success of the McCain campaign, Barack Obama went bodysurfing.

UPDATE II: Ed Morrisey notes:

The invitation came at short notice, and I assumed it would cover their fundraising numbers for July. Calling a press conference to announce it indicated that they either had good news, or needed to explain bad news.

Probably Team Maverick expects Obama to announce huge numbers for July, and so they wanted to get ahead of the story by putting McCain's numbers in context of the large RNC/state GOP fundraising operation.

Quote of the Year?

"McCain should return the $4,600 that the Hiltons donated and tell them to buy panties for their daughters."
-- Don Surber

Obama backstage passes for sale

It's a fundraiser:

If you make a donation in any amount before midnight on July 31st, you could be selected to travel to Denver for the last two days of the convention -- including the huge event at the open-air stadium on the final night.
Ten supporters from all over the country will be selected to go Backstage with Barack.
We'll provide airfare, accommodations, and two days of convention activities for each supporter and their guest -- including a private meeting with Barack before his historic speech.

Hmmm. For a mere five dollars, I can have tickets? Free travel? Accomodations for me and a guest? And think of the publicity! "McCain Backstage With Obama . . ."

Honey, where's the Visa card?

Obama: The $300 Million Man

Marc Ambinder notes that Barack Obama has raised $337 million to date -- already the biggest haul of campaign cash in history, and almost certain to top half a billion dollars by Election Day.

Whatever criticism one makes of the Obama campaign, their fundraising prowess is remarkable. And it's ironic that they've raised this astronomical sum in order to defeat John McCain, the man who pushed through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to "get the big money out of politics." If McCain loses, he will have been hoisted by his own petard.

McCain's message? 'Show me the money!'

The L.A. Times reports:

Just 3 1/2 months out from the presidential election, McCain's national campaign schedule is being driven by the quest for money, not by the hunt for votes in 50 individual state elections. All right, every campaign says it's gonna compete everywhere. But they don't.
He's always looking for votes wherever he goes. But wherever he goes is determined not by potential votes but by where his finance folks have found enough donate-able money to set up fundraisers.
For McCain for now his itinerary is built on the quest for dollar$, not votes. That helps explain the widespread sense of unease among many Republicans nationally who do not deny he's working very hard.
But they fear he wasted his three-month general election head start not defining himself and not driving home the all-important central message of why he wants to be president.

The problem, of course, is that McCain was the favorite of a relatively small number of big-ticket contributors. He's got no no activist grassroots. I remember at CPAC in February, the hotel lobby was filled with young volunteers for Mitt Romney. But when John McCain arrived, it was with a squadron of professionals -- consultant types, hired guns.

To the extent that McCain has any natural "base," it can be summed up in two words: Old Republicans. These GOP geezers aren't going to spend 20 hours a week canvassing precincts in their walkers. And they sure as heck aren't going to do much in terms of Facebook/MySpace/MeetUp action.

Appealing to patriotic geriatrics is all fine and good, but it's hard to staff a campaign from the hip-replacement/coronary-stent crowd. McCain's inability -- or unwillingness -- to consider the interests and concerns of younger voters is a major weakness, and not one that can be corrected in July.

And let me point something out: I hammer Obama relentlessly, day after day, week after week. But every time I say anything negative about the McCain campaign, there is inevitably feedback from conservatives along the lines of: "How can you say that? Do you want Obama to win?" No, but if the Republican Party nominates a bad candidate, who is to blame for that? Certainly not me, since my top three choices for the GOP nomination were:

• 1. Somebody besides John McCain;
• 2. Anybody who's not John McCain; and
• 3. Please, dear God, not John McCain.

So I blame his nomination on you Republicans who were either (a) McCainiacs all the way, or (b) late arrivals on the Anybody But McCain bandwagon.

At any rate, if John McCain is a bad candidate with an incompetent staff that runs a stupid campaign, that's not my fault, and I'm not going to ignore it, just because he's a Republican. The truth trumps all other considerations.

UPDATE: Jimmie at Sundries Shack:

John McCain backed his way into the nomination because Republicans shot each
front-runner full of holes the second they got any sort of lead.

The big problem was that Fredhead Fever fizzled. A lot of that was Fred's fault (and his wife's fault) but a lot of it was because Rudy Giuliani's influential admirers in conservative media did everything they could to pour water on Fredhead Fever.

Also, Romney and Huckabee split the religious conservative vote, and neither of them got much juice outside that bloc. Huckabee would have been acceptable except (a) he had a well-established open borders record, and (b) he is an ignoramus on economics. Romney had good rhetoric on both economics and immigration, but his Massachusetts record was at variance with his presidential rhetoric on these as on other issues.

I had hoped that the Anybody But McCain forces would coalesce around Romney -- for all his flip-flops, the guy just looks like a president --but then Romney came to CPAC and quit (saying in almost as many words that if he kept running, the terrorists would win). That left McCain, Huckabee and Ron Paul. The very next day, Ron Paul announced he would be "scaling back" his presidential campaign. At which point, the "Draft Bob Barr" movement sprang full-blown from the head Zeus. But that's another story . . .

This year's GOP primary race was a disaster from start to finish, and why? One word: "Macaca."

Obama: A fool and his money

The leeches of the professional consultant class have apparently latched onto Hope:

With a burn rate of $42 million a month, Obama's campaign can just barely sustain its current levels of spending. And what's leftover may not be adequate to run the kind of campaign he needs to win. Just consider despite all the money he's raised, Obama has been outspent on television by 3 to 1 in the last two months. All the stagecraft and theatrics has come with a hefty cost. . . .
Obama's overhead is $10 million more per month than McCain's, and this is likely to increase substantially given his campaign's out of control spending and lofty plans for the general election. . . .
A paid staff of 2,000 is unheard of in the history of presidential elections. Consider that it's five times larger than Bush's campaign staff in 2004. (Emphasis added.)

Adding so much paid staff this early in the campaign is a mistake because, if you have to cut back later -- and Obama can't possibly keep meeting such a bloated payroll -- the negative publicity is disastrous: "Obama cuts staff; cites cash crunch."

Besides which, what's the pricetag for this foolish foreign expedition? Geezy-peezy! Look, ask any political operative about the manpower involved in organizing one -- just one -- campaign rally or fundraiser, stateside. The whole business of travel schedules, advance publicity, media arrangements, hotel bookings, stage set ups, sound and lighting -- when a big campaign is on the road, the logistics of the operation are a never-ending headache that chews through the man hours.

OK, so now try to do this in six or seven countries, with five or six languages, all the customs hassles, etc. The very idea of draining such enormous amounts of money and manpower out of a presidential campaign, a month before the convention, in order to stage a 5-day publicity stunt -- and that is all Obama's foreign trip is -- has to be viewed as what it is: a blunder of epic proportions.

Even if Obama can complete such a trip without committing a costly gaffe (and the smart money says he can't), it's so transparently a P.R. gimmick that the net impact will almost certainly be negative. And it's expensive as all hell.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder's analysis, while worth reading, can be boiled down to (a) Obama's spending is not too high, (b) he's going to have all the money in the world, and generally (c) everything Plouffe & Axelrod do is brilliantly perfect and perfectly brilliant.

The counter argument is (a) so how come Obama's barely ahead in the polls, (b) does nobody take seriously the continuing disgruntlement of the PUMAs, and (c) doesn't this gaudy and expensive foreign excursion look a lot like hubris?