Breaking News on Wednesday Night: Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?
By Larry Johnson on August 19, 2008 at 9:15 PM in Current Affairs
Since the history of publicly financed campaigns began the formula has been simple. The Candidate uses the public funding (currently set at $84 million) to pay for ads, management, travel, etc. And the party puts together the field organization financed by its near-unrestricted fundraising abilities. But something happened to alter that fully functional formula for the DNC in 2008.
First, presumptive nominee chose not to accept public funding. Then, the party was robbed of its ability to raise money with one email that went out from Obama, as soon as he got control of the DNC list. The email said: “Do not give money to the DNC. Give it to Obama.” The DNC is now not financially equipped to turn out the vote. They are broke. The money they have will barely cover the payroll and a few field advisors. There will not be enough cash to be able to fund thousands of field offices, like they have in the past.
So what are they going to do? Do they ask all the college kids that support the presumptive nominee to skip their fall semester and hit the streets? Or, maybe they can find an existing organization. Maybe they can tap one with offices already in 38 states – one that has 160,000 shock troops who learned some solid Alinsky persuasion techniques.
Maybe that is the answer. Perhaps the answer, and some detail of how it can be done, could surface here, and maybe in an East Coast newspaper, tomorrow. In the mean time, if anyone reading this sad story has any ideas that could help the DNC solve their unfortunate dilemma, you should share them here and now.



















