Any politician who has a goal of raising one billion dollars for a campaign is disconnected

from the majority of us. I dont care who it is. Our president included. It is vulgar and obscene and belongs on the Kardashian reality show, not in politics.
Flame away. There is no good argument for this.

'nuf said

is very telling, indeed.

.

Split that to $2 / voter for the primary and $3 / voter for the general election?

POTUS when they grow up. Well the 99% anyway, imo.

He was raised in a 2 bedroom apartment that his grandparents were renting for gods sakes.

to run for POTUS. Sorry, but my point stands.

with ties to some of the biggest corporations in America- so as much as you try, my point still stands.

elections, I don't know what is. This kind of money is obscene, especially when there are so many people living in poverty with no place to live, food, health care, etc. That money could be spent in so many positive ways. I am so sick of the corporations (read koch brothers) trying to buy our government, especially the politicians. What happened to America? When did we lose her?

Republicans will never allow this to happen because they'd lose on the merits of their ideas alone. Their whole election strategy is to spend massively on negative ads. Take the money out of elections and our representatives would not be dependent on corporate sources for their campaign/re-elections cash and could actually do the people's work instead of private corporations.

There can be no unilateral disarming by Democrats while Republicans have corporate funding to push their agenda.

... of how totally dysfunctional is our democracy is that this goal/plan/idea is even part of the 2012 elections discussion.

Of course, Citizens United is partly to blame -- but campaign spending was out of control even before that Supreme Court ruling.

(including the soft-money, no-we-didn't-mention-the-name-of-the-guy-we're-obviously-trashing, "issue" adds)

...then campaigns wouldn't need to cost nearly as much.

Not even close. That's just a shock value number that a few media outlets circulated as a possible cost of the ENTIRE 2012 CAMPAIGN CYCLE, and which has immediately become lodged in some people's minds.

But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your flamebait.

Over $700 million dollars, as I recall. Why would $1 billion be so out of reach this time? By the way, do you have a link to your facts?

Given after all that the vast majority of that money came from small donors. Or why you ignore the fact that that $700 million covered two very long, very difficult campaigns (primary and general), while the 2012 opposition is rather less competent.

You made a statement of fact and I was only asking if you had a link? Some of us had not read that...

Why does it cost so much to run for POTUS? It was 350mil in 2004...now the price tag has tripled!?! Inflation?

This is from April...

"The president pledges to focus on his job but will pick up the tempo of campaigning this month with several fundraisers. The campaign is hoping to raise a record $1 billion."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/04/nation/la-na-obama-campaign-20110405

And some believe more in the power of their message.

here

Note: Romney and the Republicans consider those corporations to be people.

You'll have an uphill fight against the people who think Obama's shit smells of roses, but good for you trying to point out the painfully obvious.

he's playing a good strategy given the ridiculous way the rules are written. namely, money, and i mean BIG money, is hugely important, and one of the best ways a leading candidate has to keep the edge early in the game is to warn people that they're in the process of building up a huge pot of cash.

this intimidates everyone else from throwing their money away on any other candidate who can't possibly compete with that level of money.

realistically, he HAS to raise a large amount of money, and do you really think it wise of him to go about it poorly?



again, the SYSTEM is completely warped in that it effectively makes such money-focused strategies absolute requirements.

i'd love to see some serious public campaign financing and other steps to remove the money element, but i can't find fault with any individual politician for playing the game according to the rules.

If there was public financing with each candidate limited to a certain amount, it would be a level playing field.

Now, its whoever is the highest bidder gets to have undue influence on the candidate and if they win they owe them big time with political paybacks such as legislation.

after it and give not a thought to the people or country they are supposed to be representing.

After being caught up in so many election cycles, I have finally realized they are nothing but a distraction to the important issues--time, money and energy wasters.

We argue and argue about the two parties but always end up in the same sinking boat.