Also, I still havn’t heard either of the candidates talk about the crisis in the Congo. Has anyone?
Another of Nielsen’s Blogs, Nielsen Wire, shows that Obama’s “infomercial” had a huge impact on the Primetime TV crowd last night. A few thoughts.
I thought that Obama’s infomercial was pretty good. I definitely felt inspired at times when he was talking about his general message and some of the vignettes about the regular working Americans worked well. In addition to targeting working class Americans in middle America, they were just interesting stories about people that I don’t hear much here in Philadelphia. I think that the infomercial did no harm and was just pretty good. I mean, if you have tons of money to waste, it was a good way to do it.
I did start thinking, though, about what it means that we are so obsessed with working class Americans. The middle class is VERY important and I’m obviously not saying that we need to be paying more attention to the most wealthy of us. But what happened to the extremely poor?
Though I wasn’t around for it, I get the feeling that Robert F. Kennedy’s Poverty Tour was focused on those who truly needed more help from the government in order to survive. The same is true for the welfare program, which has been reformed so many times that it barely exists today. Now we have the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which provides (not enough) funds for people who earn low wages, but almost nothing for those who just don’t work. But we aren’t talking about those people. Voters are not interested in helping out the extremely poor, whether they are homeless or mentally unstable or both. Voters are more accepting, though, of government programs that help the middle class, many of whom have lost jobs or are losing jobs because of the deindustrialization of the past few decades.
I am not saying that candidates should abandon the middle class in favor of the extremely poor. But it has become a foregone conclusion at this point that the election is a referendum on the economy. So let’s put the middle class and the extremely poor front and center and think about solving the economic woes for both of these groups.
Focusing only on the middle class while wiping the problem of homelessness under the rug indicates the cynicism of American candidates who will only adopt policies that benefit large voting blocks. In this election, that means working class voters are coddled to the detriment of those who are even poorer.
Barack’s infomercial definitely made a play for working class white Americans. But I’d like to see some acknowledgement of the poor as well.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Foreign Affairs | Tags: DRC, Ethnic favoritism, Rwanda
It’s not that this funding was inappropriate. I think that the international community was right to help this democracy after it was attacked by the former superpower that controlled it.
But I cannot help but wonder why this attack became such an international issue while the crisis in the Congo has flown under the radar. Since August, the deteriorating situation between the Congolese government and a rebel army led by Laurent Nkunda, who calls himself the protector of the Tutsis, has displaced more than 250,000 people.
This war could have a much more drastic result than the Georgia invasion if it does not conclude quickly. Congo’s Second Civil War (1998-2003) is often referred to as Africa’s World War because so many neighboring governments were pulled into the fighting. The civil war and the crisis that followed it has resulted in nearly 5.5 Million murders. As of January, 45,000 civilians continued to die per month, the same rate as directly after the Civil War.
Most haunting, is how the rival factions largely mirrored the Hutu/Tutsi conflict that led to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Rwanda borders the DRC to the east and could be pulled into their struggle if it remains a battle based on decades of Hutu/Tutsi hatred. After nearly being wiped out by the genocide in 1994, Rwandan Tutsis have consolidated control of the country and many have claimed that they are unlawfully suppressing the country’s Hutu majority, a claim that existed before the Hutus rose up to exterminate Tutsis in the 1990s. The fighting in the Congo could spill over to incite that hatred once again.
The New York Times has published a few articles about the crisis in the Congo, but the issue remains largely hushed within American politics. While we discuss Barack Obama’s character and John McCain’s age, people continue to be killed and displaced in central Africa because of their ethnic origin or ideological beliefs.
Are we still too afraid of the Dark Continent to protect it as we would countries with white majorities?
Filed under: 2008 Election, Republicans, Scandals | Tags: Free, GOP, Sarah Palin
Palin is now requiring that reporters submit questions to her campaign before the interview. This while she accuses the Obama campaign of supporting policies that are more common in countries “where the people are not free.” So Barack is a dictator because he wants to raise taxes on the upper class and increase some government programs, but Palin is a freedom wielding patriot even though she hopes to control the press. In other words, she is so American that she feels comfortable ignoring the first amendment altogether.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Economy | Tags: 2008, Advertising, Election finance
On its blog “Connecting the Dots” David Martin of Nielson Online, probably the greatest company in the history of the world, posted that Obama’s internet advertising has had a much stronger impact than McCain’s. He writes, “Since July, Obama has placed 2.1 billion display impressions online, spread out over more than 200 unique ad creatives and 400 web properties. What’s even more stunning is that he’s out-gunned McCain with 23 times the impressions over that time period.”
Martin also points out that this advertising surge began when the stock market started to fail and voters flocked to Obama in large numbers. This indicates that, even though the issues have been favoring Obama in the past month, his campaign has used the media skillfully to maximize the impact of Obama’s surge.
This comes back to the fact that Obama has so much more money than McCain. The O-Campaign has raised almost twice as much as McCain’s ($600 Million to McCain’s $360 Million) and they are showing it. Obama is able to make more of an impression on the internet because he can throw money wherever he wants to (even video games). Next week Obama will air a half hour long program on multiple news networks to get his message out. McCain simply would not be able to afford that.
The thing that really angers me is how Republicans are suddenly shocked by a candidate’s overwhelming use of campaign funds. According to an article on NPR’s website, “McCain, speaking to Fox News, warns that Obama’s accumulation of such massive amounts of money can lead to fundraising abuses. Obama is ‘completely breaking whatever idea we had after Watergate to keep the costs and spending on campaigns under control,’ McCain says.”
This from the party that has constantly said, in opposition to campaign finance reform, that campaign funding is equal to speech and therefore cannot be constrained. This is typical Republican hypocrisy. Government should reduce spending while fighting two seemingly endless wars. We need to reduce the size government but dictate who you are allowed to fall in love with. Campaign funding is equivalent to speech until the Democrats have the louder financial voices.
I should note that McCain has historically been a proponent of campaign finance reform. Also, the Republicans are not the only ones crying wolf about campaign finance. The Associated Press reported today that the Obama campaign has accused the McCain campaign of violating campaign finance regulations. To me, the evidence for this accusation seems as thin as the Republican’s assertion that Obama’s successful fund raising campaign is suspicious.
In short, the campaigns are both anxious to point out inconsistencies of the opposing campaign’s finance decisions because the impact of the funds accumulated are so powerful. It seems clear that Obama’s surge in the polls has been the result of the dwindling economy and a constant string of missteps from the McCain campaign. But his extensive and unprecedented media advertising campaign is dwarfing McCain’s. And this fund raising advantage makes it impossible for McCain, falling further behind in the polls, to make his case to undecided voters.
Ben Buchwalter 