The DP seems to have be stuck in a cruel dilemma: as long as politics is largely conducted via TV, and candidates don't get free air time, it costs huge numbers of bucks to run campaigns. Collecting $50,000 from one contributor is obviously much easier than collecting it from 5,000 contributors at $10 each, so Democratic candidates have to go after essentially the same big pockets as the Republicans, and these days the Republicans are much more successful at those stratospheric heights. OTOH, even if they were as successful, it would just mean that they would be as indebted to Mr. Moneybags as the Republicans are. As it said in that WP article:
> Georgetown's Bailey said that as long as Republicans control Congress
> and
> the White House, "the Democrats will have to work harder and harder" to
> win over business. "The more they'll have to do what business likes," he
> said.
The only way out of the dilemma, it seems to me, is a really massive, truly "grass-roots" campaign for a Democratic candidate, which I doubt will be feasible by next year. So perhaps we will have to live through four more years of Bush-induced torture, while a real grass-roots takeover of the DP gets underway.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org _______________________________ "Play the guitar like you don't know how to play." (Miles' instruction to John McLaughlin)