If only those Marines had been armed...
I think what nenjin was trying to say was that if it had been a white guy, we could all have rested easy in the knowledge that he was obviously a crazy lone wolf and definitely not a terrorist. But because he's a Muslim Arab-American, it's a reminder of the existential threat that all brown people pose to America. (note -- I am not saying nenjin thinks this way)
In more pedestrian election news, three main items:
1.
Polls. I won't post all the polls this week, just highlight the major points.
First, for the second consecutive national-level poll, Donald Trump is leading the GOP race, at 18%. The race seems to be seperating into a front-3 of Trump, Bush and Walker (all with 14-18% polling numbers) and everyone else (<10%). Bush is leading in Virginia at 18%, with Walker and Trump tied for 2nd at 14%.
Second, gravity seems to be reasserting itself on Bernie Sanders. Clinton is reliably holding any where between a 35-to-50 point lead over Bernie in polls.
Third, Clinton is still reliably trouncing any of her potential GOP rivals. Bush and Rubio look the strongest against her. Trump loses in a landslide.
2.
Fundraising. The campaigns had to release their Q2 fundraising numbers to the public this week, and there's a few surprises, some not-at-all-surprises, and some why-is-this-shit-legal headshakers.
If you look at
just the campaign committees, Hillary Clinton raised more than any other candidate, GOP or Democrat. By a factor or 3 or more. The Clinton campaign raised 47.5 million over three months, while the next closest candidate was Bernie Sanders with 15.2 million. The highest GOP fundraiser was Ted Cruz at 14.3 million.
BUT (and this is a Kim Kardashian-sized but) if you include SuperPAC money (and you totally should), then Jeb Bush outstrips everyone. His official campaign has only raised $11.4 million -- and I'm sure his campaign will try to make something out of his "underdog" status in their campaign literature -- but his associated SuperPAC (The Right To Rise PAC) raised
$103 million, most of that while Bush wasn't even an official candidate. To give you an idea of how much that is, Hillary Clinton's campaign war chest PLUS her SuperPAC money only totals $63.1 million, and she had the highest combined total of any candidate after Bush. More on Bush's SuperPAC fuckery below.
It's impressive that Sanders has hit $15 million considering he has no SuperPAC at all, and most of his cash has come from small-time donors (<$200 contributions). Both Sanders and Ben Carson got more than 80% of their campaign donations from small donors. Bush and Clinton, as you'd expect from establishment candidates, are getting most of theirs from large donors.
Should also be noted that Kasich, Walker, Christie and Webb didn't file as candidates before the end of Q2, so they won't report until October. In fact, I'd wager that avoiding the early financial reports may have been why Walker stayed out as long as he did.
But money is only useful if you spend it. And what kills many campaigns is burning through it too fast without generating the momentum to get more down the road. High "burn rates" can be an indicator of a moonshot campaign, where they're gambling on an aggressive early strategy and then will have to fold if they don't score an early primary win. Based on that, Ben Carson and Rick Santorum may not even make it to the debates, much less the primaries.
Carson raised a much more respectable $10.6 million, but he's already burned through $5.9 million of that. Carson's poll numbers are far better (4-10%, average of 7%) and he should be on the debate stage. Carson's campaign is basically on life support. If he has a strong showing at the debates, the campaign could get an infusion of new cash. If not, he might need to pull the plug.
Santorum raised only ~$600,000 and has already spent $400,000 of that. And he's currently polling around 1-2%, not even enough to make the debate cut. If Carson's campaign is on life support, Santorum's is in hospice care, just waiting for the inevitable.
Trump raised a paltry sum of $1.9 million and has already spent $1.4 million, but he's a special case. In case he hasn't reminded you a thousand times by now, he's "really rich". So fundraising really isn't a concern for him, if he's serious about seeing this thing through. That's a bigger advantage than it might seem. Not only does it mean that he doesn't have to cater to particular well-heeled consituencies, but it's time and effort he doesn't have to spend. Fundraising is the #1 timesink of political campaigns, and the majority of the money raised goes to fund campaign efforts...to raise more money. It's sort of a hideous cycle that Trump can sidestep and focus entirely on self-promotion (which the man has spent his entire professional career doing) and attacking others.
3.
Bush's SuperPAC. I'm giving this its own section, because this shit takes the
Citizens United decision and pours fucking wasabi-infused lemon juice on the wound. According to some reports, the Bush campaign plans on
turning over most of the campaign activity (fundraising, canvassing, etc.) to the Right to Rise PAC. Which has no limits on contributions. Also, one of Bush's friends and former staffers has created a non-profit group called Right to Rise Policy Solutions, which would allow donors to even bypass the reporting requirements on SuperPACs. If a business or individual wanted to dump $100 million into the Bush campaign, but not get any kind of PR blowback (for the donor or the Bush campaign), they could "donate" that money to the non-profit (completely unreported to the FEC), which then in turn donates that $100 million to the SuperPAC, but the name is only going to show up as the non-profit, not the original donor. It's basically electoral money laundering. Potentially, this could even allow foreign donations, because the money flowing into the non-profit is completely untracked by the FEC.
I gotta hand it to him, that is slick as hell. Also, ethically and morally bankrupt and borderline illegal. But slick. If it proves effective, say hello to the new model for American political campaigns, which would finish gutting any trace of campaign finance reform in the US. I'm not even sure what functions would be left to the "main" campaign committee. Internal polling and making appearances, I guess. They're not allowed to coordinate with the SuperPAC, but you really don't need to coordinate with get-out-the-vote efforts or fundraising (most of which goes to fuel fundraising, as I pointed out earlier) or push-polling or campaign ads (whether attack or self-promo).
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1586592 times)