Obama’s Rejection Of Public Campaign Financing Video

I loved the captions.

Humor was JFK's great asset, and I'm sorry that Obama doesn't seem to have the same chuckle producing natural talent...

In today's political world, though, I wonder if it may not be dangerous to speak jokingly. I'm sure every word would immediately be turned inside out to mean something other than what was intended.

It makes perfect sense for him to reject public financing and continue doing as well as he is doing. Why should campaigns be financed publicly, anyway? Why should you or I be required to pay for the campaign of anyone we don't support?

(Incidentally, to answer a question asked by Steve K. several days ago -- I had a power failure occur when answering it and I usually don't backtrack far on this site at later dates -- what I just posted above does not mean I am not necessarily going to vote for Obama, but instead for McCain, this year. The vote this year has a "strategic" nature, and it's not limited to forcing the GOP to reform by voting for the other side, the way Quebecois may vote for a bad federal-provincial relations bill just to give a no-confidence vote to Ottawa, or to put the Dems in charge and likely to make bad economic and foreign-policy-related conditions worse and to give the GOP an opportunity to regain power after a reform...)

"Humor was JFK's great asset, and I'm sorry that Obama doesn't seem to have the same chuckle producing natural talent..."

Sacrilege! He's the new JFK, as we've all been told since Super Tuesday!

I enjoyed the video, the captioning was a blast! Obama is going to be the target of so much humor to highlight his weaknesses that it will be interesting to see how people react to it (humor at Obama's expense in general). I would hope that people/humorists stay away from demeaning racist/muslim jokes which support people's bigotry and fears of him.

"Obama is going to be the target of so much humor to highlight his weaknesses that it will be interesting to see how people react to it (humor at Obama's expense in general)."

I don't see this decision to reverse his position (I won't used dumbed-down vernacular here) as dishonest or in any way wrongful, and it certainly won't hurt him badly, particularly if it's seen as a money-raising-war step to take against McCain and McCain-supporting special interests.

What's really interesting to me about the last item is to what extent not only GOP-leaning voters (if merely by lesser-of-two-evils logic) are going to vote Democratic this year (as much as or more than in 1996), but to what extent corporate interests and donors will switch from GOP to Democratic. Especially interesting is if it happens early rather than late (bandwagon; expectation of Obama victory).

DLS, I agree, I don't see Obama's decision to forgo public financing as reversing his position. His position to accept public financing was to come to a mutual agreement with McCain. That mutual agreement didn't happen. Furthermore McCain has said he won't "referee" for the 527s.

Obama is trying to limit the influence of lobbyists and Moveon.org has even disbanded its 527 (thankfully- I didn't much care for them).

Obama, by not accepting what we usually think of as "public financing" is truly running a truly publicly financed campaign, his support from supporters, not from tax payers or lobbyists. To pick up on your comment about corporate interests and GOP donors switching to Democratic this year... they'll go where they think there support will do the most good... that's politics... Given that it's widely expected that Obama and the Dems will remain in power, then corporate interests will try to influence the Dems by money. What will be really interesting is how the Dems and Obama respond to this support. Many Dems in Congress will be thrilled, though I think Obama wants to limit the corporate influence. A big divide between the Dems in Congress and Obama. It will be interesting to see if Obama can prevail.