We're up against 3 formidable independent forces in this election: a complacent (or complicit) media pushing pro-McCain, anti-Obama stories, 527 groups that are waiting to attack, and voting machine problems.

We tell ourselves "never again" about 2000 and 2004 - these three forces were in large part to blame for the losses in those years.  What are we willing to do to ensure that "never again" do we repeat 2000 or 2004?  In other words, how can we, independent of the Obama campaign's machinery, overcome these forces?  How much of a vote margin do we need to give Obama to overcome these 3 forces?

Read on to see why I believe we must recruit 198,000 new volunteers who will garner 9.9 million new votes.

Conflict of interest, anyone?

John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements.

Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign's payroll, but would also step down from his role on McCain's Virginia Leadership Team, a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said.

"If you're working for a 527 involved in the presidential race, you won't have a named role in our campaign," said Rogers.

I'm not quite sure what that means -- people can't have named roles in the McCain campaign and still work on 527 organizations trying to impact the outcome of the presidential race. Does that mean that the McCain campaign is alright having people working on such 527s secretly advising the campaign in non-named roles? Is there another meaning to such a statement that I'm missing? Either way, campaign finance experts aren't terribly impressed.

Campaign finance experts expressed surprise that a McCain consultant would moonlight for a 527, a dual role that could trigger inquiries from the Federal Elections Commission.

[...]

"When you involve the same people there's at least the risk that coordination will be found," said Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law issues. "The question is why a campaign would want to run that risk -- especially a campaign like McCain's or Obama's that tries to put itself out there as supporting campaign finance reform and opposing 527s."

This type of attitude towards campaign finance from McCain -- not exactly following the spirit of law, playing games despite having previously spent so much time demagoguing on the issue in the past -- should come as little surprise to MyDD readers as it's something we've written about over and over and over again. And even if it seems that the establishment media haven't fully embraced and accepted this reality, believe me when I say that McCain's shenanigans are not being overlooked by a lot of voters who by November aren't necessarily going to see McCain as so righteous or so honest.

Last week, this question was asked in reference to 527s organizing against Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton, although the diarist neglected to mention her) in the General Election:

So - do we figure this out now or do we ignore that two-ton elephant in the room and hope like hell all those 527s ignore it too come the general?

The New York Times' Michael Luo has the story.

The conservative group Freedom's Watch, headlined by two former senior White House officials, had been expected to be a deep-pocketed juggernaut in this year's presidential election, heralded by supporters on the right as an aggressive counterweight to MoveOn.org, George Soros and the like.

But after a splashy debut last summer, in which it spent $15 million in a nationwide advertising blitz supporting President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq, the group has been mostly quiet, beset by internal problems that have paralyzed it and raised questions about what kind of role, if any, it will actually play this fall.

The group was conspicuously absent this week as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, returned to Congress to testify. Moreover, the troubles at Freedom's Watch come as some Democratic-aligned groups are seeking to take the offensive, with one group, Progressive Media USA, planning to raise $40 million to spend on advertisements and other efforts to undermine Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

[...]

Backers of Freedom's Watch once talked about spending some $200 million, a figure that officials now say was exaggerated. Lending to the aura of ambition, the organization moved into a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot office in Washington and hired a staff of about 20, with talk of bringing in scores more for a vigorous campaign to promote conservative issues.

[...]

Although the organization was founded by a coterie of prominent conservative donors last year, the roughly $30 million the group has spent so far has come almost entirely from the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Sands Corporation, who was recently listed as the third-richest person in the country by Forbes magazine.

It's not a terrible surprise that yet another right wing 527 organization that was supposed to be the savior for conservatives and Republicans has failed. While organizing a group as a 527 rather than a normal political committee allows contributors to donate unlimited and unregulated sums of money (instead of $5,000 checks that must be disclosed), Republican donors aren't stupid -- their chances this year aren't great, and there isn't necessarily much upside in throwing good money after bad (particularly when longer-term investments might be a better bet given the John McCain's relatively low likelihood of victory and the near impossibility that the GOP will retake either chamber of Congress).

But what Luo misses is this: The reason why Freedom Watch and all of the other right wing 527s billed as the new Republican version of MoveOn (there have been at least four others in recent memory) is that there is nothing grassroots about these organizations whatsoever. MoveOn started as a grassroots organization fighting against the right wing's attempted coup that was the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Even today, although the group does get significant funding from large dollar donors, much of its energy comes from the several million members who get involved and stay involved, whether in elections or in key issues (net neutrality, FISA, Iraq, etc.)

In the end, that's what politics should be about. The money can make a big difference, no doubt. But the money cannot trump the people when the people are active, involved and paying attention. So no matter how many $30 million donors they have on the right, if the left can continue to organize and activate the American people, no one or two donors dumping tens of millions of dollars will be able to override the will of the public.

Sen. Barack Obama, whose campaign has sharply criticized the role of outside political groups in the presidential race, has benefited more than any other candidate from millions of dollars in independent political expenditures, records show.

It seems that Barack Obama rhetoric is finally exposing him to be something less than the demi-god that media pundits have been professing.

The increasing support for Mr. Obama has given him a boost from the same sort of political activity his campaign has railed against, especially when millions of dollars in union and other special-interest money backed his opponents.

The following is the continuation of the first page of the article:

The political arm of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other independent groups have spent more than $7.1 million directly supporting the Illinois Democrat's bid for the presidential nomination, campaign records show. By contrast, similar outside groups have spent about $5.1 million backing Sen. Hillary Clinton, New York Democrat.

Political specialists point out that Mr. Obama doesn't have any control over those expenditures because outside groups raise and spend money independent of the presidential campaigns.

"It's going to happen, regardless of what the candidates say," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

The Obama campaign, which had been vocal in criticizing such expenditures earlier in the race, says it asked groups not to mount independent political efforts on Mr. Obama's behalf.

Citing money from "big interests," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in an e-mail to supporters last year, "Outside groups are in the process of pouring more than $3.2 million into Iowa to support Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

"Barack has repeatedly spoken out against the work of these outside groups, and this campaign does not accept any money from Washington lobbyists or PACs," he wrote.

Please click HERE for the complete Article.

It's been said that generals often make the mistake of fighting the last war.  They study the tactics of that conflict so much that they only concern themselves with how they would have won that battle and don't notice when conditions have passed those issues by.

I see that a lot here in the constant hand wringing over the inevitability of those evil 527s and how they will destroy the election.

In recent weeks, John Edwards has been hit for being supported by outside 527 organizations in Iowa and elsewhere. Leaving aside some of the questions raised in the media about the proximity of the relationship between the 527s and the Edwards campaign, I don't have much of a problem with a candidate utilizing such organizations, particularly when they are friendly ones. Would I rather see such organizations outlawed? Yes. Would I greatly prefer a public financing system that works and a constitutional amendment overturning Buckley v. Valeo, which holds that dollars are constitutionally protected words, in effect? Yes. But in the absence of important changes, I'm in favor of playing the game as best we can so that we can win and not lose. The greater change that we need in this country far outweighs the rigid adherence to process argued by some. It is for this reason, largely, that I haven't found these attacks on Edwards to resonate particularly strongly. Like Paul Krugman, I generally believe that if groups on our side wish to support candidates on our side then that's a good thing.

A more difficult question comes along when a group or an individual with questionable motives comes along to support a 527 backing a particular candidate. This afternoon The Washington Post's Matthew Mosk reports that one of the largest backers of the primary pro-Edwards 527 organization is a corporate entity seemingly controlled by Rachel Lambert Mellon, from whom Edwards has received some $4,600 in contributions. Specifically, Oak Spring Farms LLC, which is reportedly controlled by Rachel Mellon, donated $495,000 to Alliance for a New America.

Now this is not a clear and dry case that raises major red flags, only one that raises some questions. This major donor is not a major progressive player but rather a key figure within the Mellon family, a family that has been among the greatest supporters of the conservative movement in the last 50 years. Yet Rachel Lambert Mellon is not Richard Mellon Scaife, who has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to fight "liberalism," and it's not clear that she has been part of her family's conservative politics. Indeed, before her contributions supporting Edwards, which apparently date back to a $250,000 check to the One America 527, Rachel Lambert Mellon was most closely related politically to Jacqueline Kennedy.

That said, this is Mellon money. And if Edwards is going to run a campaign saying that candidates who take money from big corporations and powerful interests aren't able to bring change while directly and indirectly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from one of the most established and powerful interests around, the Mellon family -- even to fight against that family's interests -- then it's not clear to me that he's meeting his own level of expectations. And if his campaign and supporters say that Edwards' decision to accept public financing is a principled one, but then also say that the DNC and 527 organizations can make up the slack against GOP spending while some of that 527 funding comes from major special interests, then we've got a bit of cognitive dissonance on our hands.

Update [2007-12-28 21:15:20 by Jonathan Singer]: To be clear, Edwards does not have any control over Alliance for a New America, so it's worth noting that Edwards can't physically stop the 527 from taking Mellon money. What's more, Edwards has made clear that he would "prefer that all 527s — not just this one — stay out of Iowa," and later Edwards asked "this group and others not to run the ads." Still, the general sentiment still remains with me that Edwards is benefitting from this Mellon money, even if indirectly, and even though it's not clear that Rachel Lambert Mellon is of the same ilk as others of her family who have been so supportive of efforts to tear down that which we have fought so hard to build up, this story just doesn't sit well with me.

Here's a sampling of some hot news today:

This new ad -- "Stakes" -- runs in Iowa and New Hampshire starting tomorrow  (via Mark Halperin's The Page, a constantly-updated site on all the campaigns):

NEW VIDEO:  Stakes

Also from The Page:  "Union-Backed Pro-Edwards Group Hits the Airwaves in Iowa": Day after Christmas, Alliance for a New America $750,000 ad buy causing recent Obama-Edwards spat goes on the air. (Edwards is my second choice.)

That Lump of Coal: