Its been a long day, made even longer by the fact my head exploded after reading about the thinly veiled, no, make that naked power play attempted by some of Clinton's uberdonors. I tore up my well written piece on Obama's outline of his economic plan, back burnered a larger economic post, and left the kid and the nanny to their own devices while I spent all day on the phone flapping my gums about this.
Before I go any further, I am being a bit hypocritical in my outrage. I have lived for a fairly long time by the old adage "he who has the gold, makes the rules". That being said, I have always understood the corollary to that thinking is "the rulemaker better make sure he is the only one with the gold before acting like an ass".
I do not begrudge the donors for attempting to use their purchased influence to hijack the superdelegate process; rather, I despise their arrogance. These 20 people, from my neighbor Bob Johnson, who should have known better than to do HRC's dirty work earlier in the campaign to Haim Saban, the guy behind such great television ouevres as the Power Rangers and He-Man, as well as being a GW Bush donor, have the right to throw their money around as they see fit. My issue with these people is that they seem to have forgotten their top down fundraising strategy has left HRC a) millions of dollars behind Obama in total fundraising, b) more broke than Humpty Dumpty and c) willing to risk extending or even losing our House majority because their candidate didn't really have a mandate from Heaven.
There have been numerous calls for increased donations to a variety of organizations, ActBlue, MoveOn, individuals giving directly to the DCCC. These are all good things. The structures are in place, the organizations are well known.
What I would like to propose is different; it is definitely more difficult, and I am more than open to hear the negatives about my idea.
I propose that a group of well known bloggers/netizens create a standalone PAC with the express goal of matching the DCCC fundraising total of the Gang of 20. Call it something along the lines of the 109 PAC, making reference to the average contribution to Obama's campaign, and encourage donations at the $109 level or less.
Obama has in excess of 1mm donors. Being very conservative, lowballing his donor base, call it 1mm; a $25 average contribution would be a very inexpensive way of teaching some people with a vastly inflated sense of self a good lesson. The DCCC, would become, in theory, far more responsive to the activist base of the party, and that base would have a dedicated fundraising vehicle to make sure of that responsiveness.
I appreciate any response, especially criticisms.