Presidency to the Highest Bidder!

John McCain, who continues to be portrayed as a maverick out to change campaign finance law, also continues to show a personal relativism on the matter that should be garnering more media coverage. The latest news is that the Republican National Committee plans to raise $120 million to support his candidacy. This comes on top of his breaking of his own campaign finance law and decision to opt out of the campaign finance system.

McCain's proposed tax cut (making the very Bush cuts he once voted against permanent) would according to a recent analysis by Gordon and Kaval (Washington Post, The Trail, March 23, 2008) cost $2 Trillion over the next decade and deliver 58% of the benefits to the top 1% of taxpayers and only 4% to the bottom 60%. They also question whether his health plan will actually help Americans attain high quality healthcare.

Yet McCain feels comfortable claiming that Obama is "out of touch" with the frustration of working class people in America. This sort of rhetoric continues to work in my mind largely because the media allows these attacks to go unchallenged and because they themselves are completely out of touch with working class America. While the media continues to talk about Obama's pastor, his race and his latest comments, it appears the real McCoy (I mean McCain) story stuffed in the back of the post deserves substantially more coverage.

Redux from yesterday: A poll by ABC News and the Post finds that the comments that were going to cost Obama the presidency and maybe even the democratic nomination have had little effect: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/15/AR2008041503586.html?wpisrc=newsletter. Obama is closing the gap in Pennsylvania, is ahead in Indiana, is ahead in the poll in almost all categories except leadership (including electability), now leads Clinton in CA and other states she won, has more delegates, has won the popular vote and is close in the pledged superdelegates. But of course Clinton continuing to run a near-futile attempt at somehow coming out on top is good for democracy, as she attempts to destroy the probable democratic candidate.