NAFTA

[nightswatch]

So apparently Hillary and Obama are going at each other over NAFTA. Talk to me about this. While I recognize the ills of globalization and have spent time talking about them, I've gotta confess most of my economic knowledge comes from AP Macro, where I guess I got a pretty convincing case for the orthodoxy of free trade. Am I right to be ashamed

Comments

Re: campaign finiance

[userj]

I guess from my understanding what you described is soft money: groups outside of the campaign run ads for issues in support of a position/attacking rivals positions - just want to verify that's what we're talking about.

I still think that the Democrats are just as likely to have as many of these types of ads as the Republicans. Corporate interests can run ads, but so can groups like MoveOn.org, unions, etc etc. There's no evidence that there is more of this type of money out there for Republicans than there is for Democrats.

"As for McCain being stuck with a public financing cap, that's new to me. How would that work?"

Yeah, NPR ran a story on it a couple weeks ago. I havne't heard anything else, so it may have blown over... Here's the gist. If a candidate takes public funding, they can't spend more than I think 50 million on their campaign outside of that. that's the reason most people don't take it.
Now, apparently, McCain's campaign may have used the prospect of getting public funding money as COLLATERAL for a short term loan back when he was strapped for cash. It may be that his campaign receiving/using this money might count as a legal committment to take public money. Or it might not (apparently the wording was done very carefully because McCain's campaign probably realized this could be a problem, especially if Clinton were the candidate).

Re: campaign finiance

[salieri]

Well I think that the conservative 527's are likely to raise more if their candidate accepts public financing in the general, but even leaving that aside, demanding Obama accept public financing sort of misses the purpose of the idea. It's not as though money itself is what's wrong with politics, it's that large, entrenched interests can influence politics with their money. That isn't what's happening with Obama, though. He's going to beat McCain in fundraising with money from individuals who weren't previously participating in politics. If a million people want to give money to a candidate, isn't that making the process more democratic? I have a hard time seeing how that's a bad thing. There's still a limit on how much any person can give to Obama, so he's winning based on the number of people, not the amount each person can contribute.

Regarding the McCain loan thing. I started reading about it. It's... interesting. But on this issue to, it's hard to see why I should be sympathetic to McCain.

Re: campaign finiance

[userj]

Any money that is spent on campaign fundraising is wasted money, as far as I'm concerned. This monetary arms race is completely out of proportion. NO ONE in the world spends as much on campaigns as we do in the US. I really don't care whether 20 million Americans throw away $100 each or if 2000 corporations throw away $1,000,000 each. It's still money that could be used for actually helping people. I don't buy the "vote with your contribution" crap.

Further, you're right, it's true that _right now_ Obama is relying on Grassroots for his fundraising. But once he is THE Democratic candidate, all the special interest groups that are making the majority of Clinton's funding will flow to him. She currently has more of that type of money than McCain. I simply can't see how Clinton+Obama soft money will be less than McCain's.

Re: campaign finiance

[salieri]

I don't agree that spending money on a political campaign is a waste. Politics is all about people competing for influence over how our society is run. That can and does help people. I don't think I'm wasting money by donating to advocacy groups that are opposed by other advocacy groups, and I don't see how campaigns are any different.

As for soft money, that doesn't have very much to do with whether Obama accepts public funding. 527's still have limits on how much they can contribute to a campaign, and those don't change with public finance. Obama doesn't benefit directly from having richer special interests, just more of them. Their influence isn't felt in campaign contributions, but rather in running issue ads that don't expressly advocate for against anyone. So that money is going to be in the race no matter what Obama does.

What accepting public money would mean is that the million individual donors that are giving Obama smaller amounts of money couldn't do that anymore. Unless you think that they'll all turn around and give to interest groups instead (which I think is extremely unlikely), that means a lot of them won't be able to contribute politically to this election.

I agree that money plays too big a role in politics, and I agree that campaigns end up using too much of it. I don't think that the solution is to lock individual donations out of the process in favor of larger groups. That just seems like a foolish way to reduce the amount of money being used. If Obama and McCain wanted to set up an agreement where they both accept public money and limit the actions 527s will take on their behalf (though I don't know if that's even possible) then I'd support it.