Sarah Palin's political action committee -- SarahPAC -- raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she's gotten herself. On the one hand, this isn't that impressive. Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much. Kay Bailey Huthcison, Palin's sometime rival who is now running for governor in Texas, raised nine times as much. For somebody with a political celebrity dwarfed only by Barack Obama's, that's just not all that much cashflow.
What is impressive about Palin's fundraising haul, however, is who it came from: the grassroots. Based on her FEC disclosures, I identified 406 donations worth $200 or more, which are worth a combined total of $289,932. That's nothing, really: Home Shopping Club can bring in that much in 15 minutes selling vacuums. That leaves, however, $443,608, or 60 percent of SarahPac's total, which came from small donors. That is a very high percentage -- higher than for any of the '08 presidential candidates but for Ron Paul -- as you can see from this chart where I've colored Palin's total in Misogynist Pink.
You don't wind up with a number like that unless two things are happening: you are raising a lot of money from small donors and you specifically are not raising a lot of money from large, establishment donors. That, in a nutshell, is Palin's story as she starts to compete against the GOP primary field. I'm not convinced that fundraising is actually going to be that much of a strength of hers in the primary: she's going to have too much of the country club money soaked up by Mitt Romney (the general election might be a different story). But as Barack Obama discovered, small donors have a way of turning into activists and, ultimately, voters.
7.15.2009
Palin: All Tail, No Head
@ 10:43 AM
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Palin is raising money from the people of America that HL Mencken called the "booboisie."
"But as Barack Obama discovered, small donors have a way of turning into activists and, ultimately, voters."
just look where it got fred thompson.
This graph is misleading, because it doesn't compare apples to apples. Obama might have raised a smaller percentage of his funds from small donors, but since his total was so much higher than anyone else in the field, the total number of small Obama donors is likewise much higher.
It's certainly interesting to see that the Democratic presidential candidates mentioned above had an average of 20.8% raised through private donations, compared to 32.2% from the Republicans mentioned.
(Although, of course, neither list is exhaustive - what about Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson? I'm imagining that their funding came mainly from small donations. And if you remove Paul, the Republican figure goes down to 26.2%. Still, an interesting observation.)
syine: the disputed territory between Israel and Pakistan, according to Palin
The big question is how well her financial figures will scale up when she's truly traveling around the Lower 48 and when SarahPac becomes less a legal defense fund and more a presidential nomination fund.
I think it will scale up extremely well. And she'll have lots of free radio promoting her candidacy.
A totally appropriate title. Many thought the same thing when McCain announced her as his VP candidate last fall.
Observing US politics from afar as I'm German, I must say the Republican psyche is such a mystery to me. I had previously thought that the desire to win trumped the desire for ideological purity.
Yet Sarah Palin embodies the provincial and jingoistic worldview so many Republicans (at least of the non-rich variety) embrace. Ugly sentiments masked by a cocky, happy and visually pleasing package. That's powerful stuff.
In a way she's America's Jörg Haider. Though at least Haider found some rhetorical moderation towards the end of his career...
I wonder what percent of SarahPAC's donations come from this website. I think it's the most common banner ad I see here.
Foregone Conclusion: "It's certainly interesting to see that the Democratic presidential candidates mentioned above had an average of 20.8% raised through private donations, compared to 32.2% from the Republicans mentioned."
It is interesting. I did not know, until the 2004 campaign, that Republicans have for years generally done better in raising money from small donors. Mostly that had to do with their ability to tap into the Falwell/Robertson church tithing crowd. 2004 is when things started to change in that area when Dean came on the scene. Obama expanded on his program and got the Dems off their serious dependence on large donors.
This seems like it could be possible misleading. First, you're comparing PAC donations to I assume presidential campaign committees. Then second is you're comparing their fundraising totals at entirely different times of the year/over what period they raised their money. It seems like this early(four years before a presidential election, whether or not Palin runs) is a weird time to gauge a person's funds compared to somebody who went through and completed a very long campaign.
So, for example, you have far less people/high profile fundraisers paying attention and donating/raising money my guess is. Why not compare early Obama fundrasing against later Obama fundraising to find how his small donor/large donor ratio changed.
IMHO, "Lipstick-on-a-pig" Palin is going to be making a play for the Libertarian vote. She may even head up a "Secessionist" Party. There is a certain irony to this, of course, since she is such an anti-intellectual and Libertarians are by and large pretty intellectual.
I agree with Bryce. Palin's small donations should be compared to the other candidates' small donations for the primary or even just the pre-primary period (the year 2007).
Palin fans and Paul fans are cut from the same cloth - relatively poor, fervant, and driven by an us vs. them mentality that no logic can break. Not really a surprise she'd attract the same sort of donor profile. Big donors don't like crazy, anti-establishment types - emphasis on the crazy.
She'll make a lot of noise and have a core group of support, but like Paul and Perot before her, the very idealogy that makes her so popular with this group is self limiting on a national stage - especially without some big money backing to extend the fight and help soften the image. No matter how much she makes Murdoch happy, no way is she going to make enough to self-finance like Perot did, and she's proved herelf such a diva I can't see her running on a shoestring like Paul.
If Obama's real lucky, she'll become a third party candidate, siphon off about 10% of the GOP vote (or 4% of the total) and along with whoever the Libertarians put up give Obama a massive victory.
Adam, the graph isn't misleading because it relies on proportions—that's what it's meant to illustrate. It's a graph of relative populism.
That said, it is a bit misleading, because it's comparing Palin's current, not-running-for-president fundraising to what I assume is Obama's I-just-ran-the-general-election fundraising. A more interesting comparison would be to see Obama's fundraising distribution just before he announced his candidacy (or shortly afterwards).
If Palin somehow winded up running the general election then, as Nate said, she'd have a large number of large donors kicking in, and that would bring her percentages down to something less unusual.
The real question is whether Palin's donation spread are somehow representative of the kind of popular support she would have if she actually ran.
It would also be interesting to see what the next donation tier looks like. The $200-1000 tier. I think much of Obama's support came from people that would not normally open their wallets, but when they did they pulled out more than $200, even if they could barely afford it. It's one thing to take a few pennies from everybody—it's another to convince half a million people to skip a paycheck. Those people are the real potential activist base.
@Foregone Conclusion, @Chris Anderson
Are you two serious?
You got those numbers (20.8% small donations for Democrats and 32.2% for Republicans) by adding up the percentages on the chart and then averaging them! You can't do that!
Why? The candidates didn't receive equal numbers of donations.
A little math that a first grader could do:
Say Obama receives 100 donations. 38% (or 38) are from small donors. Say Dodd receives 10 donations. 11% (or 1) are from small donors. Then the Democrats have 39 small donors out of 110. That's 35.4 percent. All of a sudden, your numbers look ridiculous.
Either you're incredibly thick, or willfully misleading. Please stop.
Interesting; I wouldn't expect anti-intellectual, racist, knuckle-dragging, theocratic bullies to have all that much money to donate to good 'ol Bailin' Palin. If they're forgoing their daily purchases of lottery tickets in order to donate money to SarahPAC, that would mean needed funds to stimulate state treasuries are being diverted to a doomed political cause. Ironic.
Best polling post so far this week shows Obama's numbers holding up:
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2009/07/opinions_of_obama_follow_2008_1.php
AJS,
I hope that I am not 'incredibly thick', I am certainly not 'willfully misleading'. I also hope that I am not abusive to individuals who I have never met, but that's for others to judge.
I deliberately did NOT draw a conclusion that Democrats receive less money from small donors EXACTLY BECAUSE I considered Thompson, Paul and Huckabee to be relative fringe candidates who received relatively little. I am perfectly familiar with the idea of the waited average - however, I chose not to use one, because I was comparing the status of Republican and Democratic candidates respectively.
AJS is correct. Your concept of simply averaging the percentages is incorrect. You would need to sum the number of contributions per candidate per party and divide by the total number of contributions per party to arrive at a correct value.
The term you want is "weighted average" which is the only way to compare. You can hope you are not incredibly thick, but that doesn't make it so.
Foregone Conclusion -
I am perfectly familiar with the idea of the waited average - text
That's WEIGHTED average.
however, I chose not to use one, because I was comparing the status of Republican and Democratic candidates respectively.text
Although what you did can be justified as a quick-and-dirty initial mnemonic to screen for the possibility of party differences, the results you gained should not be over-interpreted.
In no way do they suggest that the Republicans get more small donations, or a greater proportion of small relative to large donations, than the Democrats (in fact, neither of these has been the case in recent elections).
Here's what caused the results you got...
With the EXTREME caveat that SarahPAC is being compared with presidential fund-raising, which IS confusing (so I will ignore the SarahPAC number), we can see that Paul, Thompson, and Huckabee got a large proportion of what financial support they got from small donors, and McCain, and especially Giuliani and Romney, did not.
Meanwhile, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards were less variant in this regard.
Looking at the SD of the means would be a better way to express this, but wouldn't really add much.
Within the Republican field, some candidates' funding was near-majority from small donors, and some was almost entirely from large donors. Democrats did not show this type of variance with regard to this metric.
The scary thing is that most of those small donors are evangelicals. That could mean they will be back in force for the next elections. Scary stuff.
BREAKING NEWS!!!
The Economy is crumbling and Obama wants to waste trillions, and tax millions while letting Medicare and MCaid go broke. He's a fool.
Read Zuckerman's piece from yesterday on why things are so bad. It's all about jobs, stupid!
http://tinyurl.com/nw53vb
Obama’s healthcare reform, just like Cap n’ Trade are job killing bills. Worse his Stim-u-Less legislation is a failure.
As Zuckerman says yes, the administration inherited the problem, but then it failed to understand how ineffective its solution would be.
For such ineffectiveness there will be high price to say.
Could it be Congress and then the White House?
petekent01 (on twitter)
"Read Zuckerman's piece from yesterday on why things are so bad. It's all about jobs, stupid!"
No way! Are you saying the high unemployment and the current recession are somehow related? What a breakthrough!
"Obama’s healthcare reform, just like Cap n’ Trade are job killing bills."
Cuz you say it, it must be true!
"As Zuckerman says yes, the administration inherited the problem, but then it failed to understand how ineffective its solution would be."
Zuckerman explicitly states that what is needed is another stimulus. Are you in agreement with his point, or are you simply cherry-picking points out of his report that you think are damning?
What's interesting is that Paul, Thompson, and Huckabee all got a high percentage of their individual total fundraising from small donors.
Meanwhile, the "mainstream", "pro-business" candidates Giuliani, Romney, and McCain got a vast majority of their individual total fundraising from large donors.
The difference between these two groups on this metric is so large that it suggests something. Logically designed studies examining whether small donations to the Republicans went to different primary candidates than large donations to the Republicans are very, very likely to find significant results.
(In fact if you treat it as n = 6 and do a t-test in excel you get a very significant result, but a far more logical way to approach it would be to look at what percentage of the total small contributions each candidate got and what percentage of the total large contributions each candidate got, which I don't have time for right now.)
Maybe there's Trouble in Paradise.
Pete Kent, if the Republican party splits in two, which will you support? The Fundamentalist Party or the Ebenezer Scrooge Party? You may have to choose...
Oh, PeterK -- how cute! Zuckerman said that the stimulus was too small. Care to comment?
Interesting that the title—All Tail, No Head—has more than one suggestive aspect to it. Surely this wasn’t a coincidence…
But the “Tail” part is right on the money. I think at least half of The Barracuda’s appeal is the way she packs her fanny into those dresses of hers. I’ll bet a lot of the over-age white farts who over-populate the GOP would love to get their hands on her booboisie.
I also think it’s probably harder to separate small donors from larger ones on the GOP side. In many companies there is a secret coercion to donate to GOP candidates, and this is registered as individual contributions when in fact they are really part of a larger impetus.
Regardless, all the money given to Sarah Palin’s PAC will be pissed away if she thinks she has a shot at ascending to the GOP nomination. However if she starts making noises about creating her own Conservative Whackjob Party I’ll be the first to send her a check. There would be no surer way of sending the Republican Party permanently out into the weeds than to have conservatives divided between the Party of Worse and the Party of Worser.
Let Palin run on a million a year - she could save up 3 million for a 2012 run?
This makes sense to whom exactly?
Nice spin job, Nate!
The truth is much more so than Obama or any of the other Dems, Palin is a the real democrat (small "d") in the field.
No doubt Romney has the CC and Wall St money for now, And Kay Bailey Hutchinson has been a political powerhouse in a huge state since before Obama's birth in some hut in Africa, so it seems.
Thus they surely will out raise her in the short run, much as Mrs. Clinton did Obama.
Clearly there is an ardent movement behind this woman. It is evident not only in the grassroots level of financial support she is attracting, but also by how tools like Nate must take pains to reach out and minimize her and her successes.
THIS IS ALL VERY GOOD NEWS FOR JOHN MCCAIN!!!
petekent01 (on twitter)
Funny also how the GOP candidates skew towards small donors while the Dems are all captives of the fat cats. Makes you wonder who the real plutcrats are!
petekent01 (on twitter)
Either I'm missing something, or you guys are reding too much into this.
Regardless of the total contributions, or what they were raised for, (PAC, primary, presidential run), is immaterial isn't it? In my opinion all Nate was trying to show was the relative make up of fundraising activities. He wasn't trying to predict the future, nor did he say that Palin's fundraising strategy wouldn't change if she took on a more ambitious political campaign. I do think he is implying that it would probably have to change for her to stand a chance.
Personally I think SarahPAC is there to pay off her friends while Alaska Fund Trust is there to pay her and her family. But that's just 'cause I'm bitter. :)
actually, it's not the coloring palin's part of the graph in pink that is misogynist (although it doesn't particularly make it easy to read; a quality that i find important in graphs), it's the title of your post.
i expect better of you.
Back to Zuckerman.
The Stim-U-Less was too small where infrastructure and jobs creation was concerned.
It is time for a mulligan!
Somehow, tho, I don't think the people stand for it. Once everyone realizes that Obama fooled us by trying to pass his grab bag of LIB projects under guise of stimulus, he will not be trusted with a similar bill again.
Fool me once . . .
Already we are seeing the same psychology at work with Cap N' Trade and Healthcare Reform: fewer and fewer are trusting Obama 's rhetoric, including the less radical within his own party.
Because Obama's credibility gap is yawning and threatens to turn into an unbreachable chasm (what a 100 days!), he knows he must push all this mess through now with little debate or risk never getting it.
Me?
I hope he fails!
petekent01 (on twitter)
Pete Kent -
Funny also how the GOP candidates skew towards small donors while the Dems are all captives of the fat cats. Makes you wonder who the real plutcrats are!
Funny how this isn't the case and is a completely incorrect interpretation of the data.
Funny how I even explained that once already.
Makes you wonder who the real reality-based people are.
As noted above, Obama will just try and Rahm through healthcare reform. He will not wait for partisan debate or agreement. He knows time is running out and he is getting desperate.
http://tinyurl.com/mkdn6l
Imagine how the Dems in Congress feel!
What is their platform for next year? A failed healthcare reform bill that either did not get passed or got passed on a party line vote that in the light of day EVERYONE is taking potshots at. Oh, I guess they can always campaign on the platform of high unemployment and the loss of millions of job (except for ACORN workers).
petekent01 (on twitter)
Wouldn't the more accurate comparison be between her PAC and other PACs? Why compare her PAC with that of campaigns? They are different concepts.
She raised more in this first quarter than fundraising powerhouse Hillary Clinton did in many quarters for her PAC
Really, Harold? 4 of the top 6 in getting smaller donations are Republicans!
petekent01 (on twitter)
Note: I posted this a couple of articles ago.
Speaking of Governors (or soon to be former Governors), SarahPac raised $730,000 in funds to date. Have you guys been clicking the ads on this site? Traitors.
All kidding aside, with the Republican party imploding upon itself in plummeting poll numbers, hypocrisy drenched sex scandals, and lack of clear vision, I've continually thought that the time is ripe for a new party. Wonder if Palin is purposely thinking of leading this charge or if she is just acting in her own self interests and being portrayed as the reluctant messiah?
Obviously I think some variation of the latter is the case but conservatives have often proved in the past that perception is 90% of reality. I shudder to think.
Misogynist Pink. Great name for a band. You know, for such a dour fellow on TV; Nate, you have a pretty good sense of humour.
We're forgetting something here:
Palin's real competition is Huckabee. I don't know if Huckabee will take a run in 2012, but if he does, that will really hurt Palin.
Huckabee has shown he's almost as good at "Relatin' to Real 'Merica" as Palin, and Huckabee has a few other advantages. He's not as divisive and has more experience.
At least he can point out he successfully finished two terms as Governor and left the state in good financial shape.
The Dems have generally had bad luck in recruiting, both for and against them. To imagine that they could be so astoundingly fortunate as to have the Repubs nominate Sarah Palin not just once, but TWICE, to national office.. is truly amazing.
It was hard to believe J. Sidney made such a disastrous pick for VP; selecting an unqualified woman eminently unprepared for the national stage, when the financial meltdown would have made selecting Romney an act of genius. C'est la vie, Senator.
But to imagine that Repubs are so insular as to deny the basic reality of Palin.. a loser, a quitter, an abject failure with ethics scandals galore nipping at her heels.. and set her loose upon their own candidates lining up for 2012? Bring your popcorn, folks.. McCain v. Romney v. Guiliani v. Huckabee was NOTHING compared to the fireworks of Palin v. any Republican more qualified than her.
Which is almost everyone in their Party.
Palin/Gingrich 2012!!!
There is an interesting tentative theory we can make about WHEN dems and repubs are more reliant on small donors and large donors respectively.
How well the dems did in the primary was roughly: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd. And the small donors rankings are: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Dodd, Biden, i.e. nearly the exact same list. To me this seems to hint that early in the primary process, Dems are dependent on big donors. But when a Dem starts to look viable, the small money matters a lot, especially once you are into the general election. Edwards was the most populist of the three main dems, but had the least small money.
With the GOP on the other hand, we see a very different dynamic. Thompson, Paul and Palin have not (yet) been anywhere near being the party nominee, but are dependent on small money. On the other hand Romney and Giuliani looked at front-runners at various points but were dependent on big money. McCain won the party nomination but was v. dependent on big money.
So the dynamic which I suspect this shows is that for the GOP, early nomination fundraising was populist while for the Dems, later fundraising was populist. I'd suggest that GOP diehards got excited about a nominee early on and start writing checks. I don't just think this was about evengelicals either, as far as I know, Thompson never excited that voting block. Once a candidate looked like a winner, the big bucks started pouring in, but the small donors from before didn't step up their game.
Among the Dems on the other hand, the small donors held back in the early primaries. Dodd and Biden didn't last long enough for the small money. It was only later on when the battle-lines were drawn that the small money started to be telling. Edwards was the exception that proves the rule, even his strong populist support was smaller for him then for Hillary and Obama who lasted longer.
It's a very speculative theory of course, so take it with a grain of salt. But I think it's interesting food for thought.
Palin; if she makes a bid for President on 2012, will likely be this generation's Ross Perot. A spoiler for the Republican party which will thankfully leave President Obama with a clear path to reelection. But what if she does manage to siphon off disenfranchised repubs and doubtful blue dog Dems? Could get interesting.
Wow, Pete Can't off his meds today. Notice the OMG overuse of !!!!!!! marks. I guess the twitter thing is affecting his mind.
Can we go back to calling Palin Caribou Barbie? I liked that moniker.
I've got to agree with some of these comments. I'd like to see one of two (or preferrably both) things charted:
1) A comparison of the proportion of funds raised from small donors at the same point in the election cycle. Obama's final numbers really aren't comparable to Palin's post-2008 numbers, but his early numbers might be. Statistically speaking, I suspect we would probably find that the percentage of funds from small donors changes over time, and probably in different ways for different candidates.
2) A comparison of the absolute values of funds raised from small donors and funds not. This could be easily conveyed in a single graph and it could be done at different time periods. Palin's high proportion of small donors could be indicative of large grassroots supports -- or it could be indicative of extremely limited support, and even extremely limited grassroots support. I don't know from looking a this graph if Palin actually raised more than Biden, Romney, Dodd, Obama, Paul, or anyone else from small donors, so it's not that informative. I could start a campaign committee and gets 5 guys to give me $200 -- I'd have a very big bar on this chart but I'd still be going nowhere fast.
I'm going to name my new band "Misogynist Pink".
The difference is that Obama has a chance to appeal to a fair number of Republicans and the entire independent and Democratic groups.
That is not to say that Obama will get all of them, but given the right circumstances, these people will support Obama.
On the other hand, Palin has the extreme right wing. A subset of the Republican party. That is about it. It doesn't matter how much she raises, she will never gather more support then the right wing.
To me it looks like she is positioning herself to be the next Ann Coultergeist, national politics will never happen for her. She is looking for the cash.
Not only did you put Palin in misogynist pink, you've got Obama in racist DARK blue. For shame.
PeteKent, I'd be really sad if you ever stopped posting here. Your stuff is so consistently breathless, so over-the-top, sometimes it just makes my day. You're as charmingly predictable as Otis the drunk, and just like Otis, the town wouldn't be the same without you.
I know, I know....I'm feeding the troll, but I figured I'd correct one of PeteKent's misperceptions:
Republicans lead among small donors NOT because they lead Dems amongst the poor or the lower-middle class, but because they lead the Dems amongst the middle and upper-middle class. The poor and lower-middle class simply don't give much at all. Dems have a larger proportion coming from rich folks because the richer tend to be about equal in partisanship (because to become truly rich in the US requires no small degree of luck), and Dems raise less total money. Thus, R>D amongst smaller donors and R=D amongst bigger donors. Hence, the proportion of total R money that comes from small donations is bigger than for Dems. The total amount they raise from small donations also tends to be larger (2008 may be an exception, with Obama...I haven't checked these numbers in a couple years). But, the inference that Dems are pawns of the rich any more than Republicans are, based on their donation %s, is simply flawed logic. Doesn't mean the Dems AREN'T pawns of the rich, but your argument certainly carries no weight.
David said...
We're forgetting something here:
Palin's real competition is Huckabee. I don't know if Huckabee will take a run in 2012, but if he does, that will really hurt Palin.
I'm not sure how exactly you look at that chart and forget it. It kinda screams out the reminder that Palin's constituency has a lot of overlap with Huckabee and Paul, though they aren't exactly the same.
Of course the question is whether Ron Paul is going to take another kick at the cat, if when he bows he endorses Palin, if Palin can survive longer than him to get that endorsement, and if it actually matters. Ron is well into his 70's now so maybe Palin can try carry his mantle (though it'll be ill fitting at best, I suspect).
On the other hand Huckabee is only in his 50's, I believe 61 in 2016. If he decides to eschew his comfy, happy place on Fox (I believe he's signed on for another 3 years at least) he's going to represent a huge roadblock for her in that he comes off as a much more genuine "salt of the earth" fellow. Also not nearly as much a dolt. While I don't necessarily agree with a lot of his positions I will certainly listen to his show, he doesn't rant at, demonize, and disrespect those guests he widely disagrees with (are you taking notes Papa Bear?).
Jarv, the theory that the GOP is more small donor funded is not supported by this graph in the first place. The bars on this graph aren't weighted for the amount the candidates raised at all. Remember, Obama and McCain blow all the other candidates in their party out of the water in fundraising for the period covered so the average is going to be very close to them. Estimating based on what I recall about how much these guys raised, I'd say the dems clock in near Obama at 36% while the GOP is a only a bit above McCain (Romney w/ lowly 9% was 2nd biggest GOP fundraiser) with 23% or so.
Pete Kent -
Really, Harold? 4 of the top 6 in getting smaller donations are Republicans!
Yes, really.
For the sake of third party readers I will elaborate on your gross logical error.
What the chart above shows, is merely what percentage of individual total contributions various individual politicians received from small donors.
For example, Ron Paul received 62% of his funding from small donors. Now, that's a pretty big percentage, but his total funding was low.
Let's look at another example, Hillary Clinton. She received forty-something percent of her funding from small donors. But her total funding was much greater than that of Ron Paul. She presumably received more from small donors - just even more more from large donors.
The most heavily funded Republican candidates - McCain, Giuliani, and Romney - received very low percentages from small donors.
The "4 out of 6" metric you mention is not logically relevant to your claim.
It simply means that among the candidates illustrated here, there were a number of very poorly funded Republican candidates were even less successful at getting big donations, than they were at getting small donations (but whose actual total amount of small donations was low). And even that is just an artifact of Nate's not including low-funded Democrats like Kucinich and Gravel in the chart.
Who actually gets the most from small donors? Let's check with reality...
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/06/23/campaign.survey.dems.exploit.new.individual.donor.advantage.and.superior.voter.mobilization
By the way, I'm surprised that you don't like "plutocrats". What are you, some kind of socialist?
"virgtalk said...
The scary thing is that most of those small donors are evangelicals. That could mean they will be back in force for the next elections. Scary stuff."
They were just as much of a "force" in 2008 as they were in 2004. They just finally got out-voted by the rising tide of the Democratic coalition of labor, middle-class women, minorities, urban dwellers, the college-post graduate educated, and non-church-goers.
Palin is LOVED by the Republican base for exactly the same reason she's ridiculed by the rest of America. She's a complete moron. They LOVE morons -- just like them and don't trust anybody who's educated.
The smart have been taking advantage of them all their lives cause they're not "edumacated." Palin is on their level.
Of course the problems of the world are too complex for that kind of ignorance, but that won't stop the legions of fundies from turning out in droves to vote for "our Sarah!"
It just won't be enough. I'd LOVE to see them run her in 2012 -- it would be a Reverse-McGovern! Instead of the usual scenario of the left running a candidate every liberal gets excited about only to be crushed by rural America, it would be the Fundies' death ride!
They'd go completely ballistic after having it pounded into them once again how completely marginalized they are.
I can't believe there haven't been any real objections to the title of this piece. The obvious sexual overtones of this are vicious and a disservice to all women in public office. "All tail, no head?" What is this, 1962? Do I really have to point out that men are never subjected to this kind of degradation? Are you really ignorant of how demeaning this is for women who've fought long and hard for their right to have a voice in the public sphere?
And don't tell me we just need to toughen up and "take it like a man." Men are never, ever subjected to this kind of below-the-belt hit.
Palin's poor grasp of even basic political issues, her illogical and absurd vacillating, and her inability to complete even one term as governor of Alaska are all fair game. Her sexuality is not.
I agree with TV dinner. the title is written by BOZO THE CLOWN - get a life and keep it in your pants and out of your hands.
Dawn,
Shut up you filthy pig. Go back to your soap operas and kissing the Big O's ass.
Looks like someone didn't have the guts to leave her post up. You're not only a pig but a cowardly one at that.
TV Dinner -
I'm pretty sympathetic to what you're saying about the title.
I don't entirely agree with this, though...
Men are never, ever subjected to this kind of below-the-belt hit.
For better or for worse, comments about the appearance, age, presumed sexual virility, body fat content, presumed sexual activities, etc, of men, are extremely common here.
To be fair to Nate, it is nearly always the conservative side that brings this stuff into the discussion, either by preaching sexual morality and then getting caught practicing the opposite, or by making insulting comments about the appearance of women they oppose, or by touting the sexuality of their own women, as they certainly did with Palin.
As this Slutty Stewardess continues to show her complete and utter ignorance, I agree 100% that the title is perfection! SHE MAKES THIS A SEXUAL ISSUE BECAUSE THE INTELLIGENCE IS ABSENT!! Even when Moosekiller announced her resignation, she still can't speak using the English language correctly. Wouldn't some one with more brains and less ego invite an editor to actually ready what she wrote-before opening mouth and inserting her hoof? More to the point--wouldn't some one with presidential goals hire someone that can actually write? She represents poor parenting, poor education, lack of professionalism, lack of committment, pure filth & greed, and a really nice fashion sense - but there is nothing in between those ears. She is about the most ridiculous thing since gWBush to enter the political arena. Please just GO AWAY, Sarah.
Wow - Coninthian?? Are you Sarah's mommie or daddie? Or is it you Cheney? As someone that obviously praises the ground the Alaskan idiot slips on - I pity you and your lame ass bible verse. Gotta love that Republican attutude, obviously you still haven't figured out why you lost. But thanks for the nasty response, that made it all worth while! Don't forget to go to church this sunday you bigot asshole.
John: I was just going from memory, but if you want, this link has data that shows that a larger portion of Bush's money came from smaller and larger donors than Kerry's: http://www.cfinst.org/president/pdf/Malbin_Pres-2008_Working-Paper_Table3.pdf
I wasn't basing my argument on the data presented above, just on my general recollection of the political science I've read.
Jarv -
I didn't address your original comment, but I figured that you were basing it on 2004 presidential data.
However, more recent data seems to show a different trend.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/06/23/campaign.survey.dems.exploit.new.individual.donor.advantage.and.superior.voter.mobilization
@harold: "Pete Kent, if the Republican party splits in two, which will you support? The Fundamentalist Party or the Ebenezer Scrooge Party?"
I call them the God Party and the Mammon Party.
As far as raising money, Mrs. Palin is one of the best there is.... for liberal causes.
She raised about $200,000 in the ten days since she resigned (hence, no way is she Gov Palin... that respect is not due).
move on.org raised over $100,000 in ONE day after they sent out an e-mail regarding her noxious WaPo article on cap and trade... which she of course had to re-name cap and tax, just because she's such a maverick...
PS I am a woman and I don't have a problem with Nate's humor in the title. It would only be offensive if the person it describes didn't relish her own bod so much.
What I find disconecerting, is that Palin is such a flake. She is so UNDERqualified for National office, it is scary.
I hope all those Obama supporters are getting the change they so longed for. I don't understand the continuing need they have to trash the girl's ideas by equating beauty with policy.
It's the seething unhinged reaction to anything Palin that makes this particular Libertarian intellectual start to want her to win.
I'd want the whole nine yards too, even if they have to fake it just for the effect it would have - move an old washing machine out onto the porch and turn it into a planter or something, and have Todd out there working on his snow machine in the driveway, fly into the reflecting pool with their Piper sea plane, then go back inside and laugh themselves to sleep at night. Maybe pick Liz Cheney as a running mate.
I hate the policies, but it would almost be wort it just to watch the elitists cringe.
actually, it's not the coloring palin's part of the graph in pink that is misogynist (although it doesn't particularly make it easy to read; a quality that i find important in graphs), it's the title of your post.
i expect better of you.
I must say, I totally agree with betsyl on this one. And I, too, expect better of you.
It should have been something more like 'PAC gives Palin a nice stimulASS'. Because then, you can always mention that there's nothing wrong with a woman being a Lass, it's actually a term of endearment. Maybe then they'll loosen up enough to stop their futile effort to change something that just is.
My God, do I hate Sarah Palin!
For all the folks complaining about the title, I gotta admit I only saw the "humor" (other than suggesting Palin has no brain) after you got mad.
I've seen references in polling, fundraising et al to heads and how long of a tail a particular issue has a lot. I believe the point being conveyed was there's no classic "early money" here that drags along a tail of small donors. The normal thinking has been you need a group of well heeled early supporters to kick start your warchest and give you the money to reach out to the rest of the populace. So I didn't read anything into ic. Or I could be wrong and Nate, for all of his post-modern feminist sensitivity on everything else, is somehow deeply unhinged when it comes to Palin.
@ Vern--
The macabre can sometimes be fun to think about, and watching haughty bigwigs squirm and shake their fists is more often fun than not. But I like America, and don't want it burnt to the ground by massive ignorance, incompetence, fundie certitude and divisiveness (well, not again, at least), even if that means I have to sacrifice a bit of horror-movie-style entertainment.
For all of you objecting to "All tail and no head" as sexist, you do know this is a statistics comment, right? So I guess you're objecting to the presumed double entendre? Speaking as a feminist, I'm having trouble seeing this title as offensive.
"All tail, no head." There is no possible way to understand this title except as sexism.
Look, there are diverse outlets on the internet for calling the media kitten butchering offspring of satan and hitler. 538 is the only site offering it's unique brew of statistical political analysis. Please, let 538 be for 538 and take the "sexism" debate to a different website.
Palin provides living proof that championship legs and high intelligence do not necessarily go leg-in-leg.
Best headline EVAH!
But as Barack Obama discovered, small donors have a way of turning into activists and, ultimately, voters.
True. Obama's trick was using the internet to harvest small donations, then up-selling to turning those people into activists for the campaign.
But Palin is getting donations from people who are already activists. I don't see any evidence that people who are donating to her PAC are then turning into activists.
The comparison between Obama and Palin doesn't go very far because they are coming from two different places. Palin is riding an early train of hard-core activists who are already committed to her cause to the death. Obama convinced a wide swath of Democrats to back him financially, then work for him door to door.
Some uninformed poster said:
"Palin fans and Paul fans are cut from the same cloth - relatively poor, fervant, and driven by an us vs. them mentality that no logic can break. Not really a surprise she'd attract the same sort of donor profile. Big donors don't like crazy, anti-establishment types - emphasis on the crazy."
Oh good god, they're not even in the same ballpark. Palin fans are emotional, Paul fans are intellectual. Paul fans believe in the Constitution... Neocons like Palin by definition don't (even though they think they do). Paul fans are sincere in their deference to the rule of law, Palin fans wouldn't have the first clue about what I just said.
She’s going VP... Bidens blunders opened the door. She’s energizing the base while herding in the sheep and it IS going to carry some weight. Romney and Palin will cover a broad spectrum and absorb the others. It tooo easy to see… you heard it here first.
@Sacto Joe - Palin can't make a legitimate ploy for the libertarian vote. She lost that when she tied her banner to the big-government religious conservatives, not to mention her socialistic policies as governor. Also, once it was discovered that her slamming the Stevens-Murkowski cabal on pork was due more to personal animosity than any genuine commitment to limited-government conservative principles, the jig was up. She has already done to much damage to her own credibility to have any realistic change of going after the Goldwater-conservatives.
Whoever said The Quitter with a Twitter would run as a Libertarian got it wrong. If she goes third-party, it will be on the Constitution Party. She's even more into the Xn Right than Paul, and this isn't 1988. Libertarians would never have her.
So Sarah Palin decided to abort her term in office.
She should have just abstained in the first place.
'Caribou Barbie' Sarah 'Bailin' Palin says one of the reasons she's resigning is to stop the ethics charges, and any additional ethics charges from costing the state. Again, this shows how little she knows.
In Alaska, the statute of limitations on such charges is two years, and it doesn't matter if the official is still in office or not. Since she's officially resigning as of July 26, 2009, that means charges could still be brought up until July 26, 2011.
Eighteen brought so far in 30 months of her being Governor (an average of 3/5 per month, and the first wasn't until she had been Governor for more than a year) - how many more will appear in the 24 months after she resigns? At that same rate, it could be somewhere above a dozen.
Maybe THIS is why she's pushing her PAC so hard?
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
David said
We're forgetting something here:
Palin's real competition is Huckabee. I don't know if Huckabee will take a run in 2012, but if he does, that will really hurt Palin
-----------------
I am interested by this thought. First off will Huckabee running hurt or help Palin? After all he is just a TV personality at the moment. That makes him look somewhat trivial, and might help Palin look a little less trivial. Secondly Palin gives the religious right someone more connected to them. One of the most damaging attacks on anyone in 2008 was Romney making Huckabee seem more moderate, by showing how Huck had raised taxes. This alienated the religious right from Huckabee, and they never really found a contender to back, until Palin came in as VP.
I think the link between Palin and Paul is interesting. I do think they have similar appeal. (Though not identical). I think they do both appeal to the dissafected young, unintellectual right, which is a group that GOPers do tend to struggle to connect with. (Possibly Reagan was the last to do so consistently.) I think given that the GOP is out of power it is not impossible to believe Palin could get those supporters to her cause in 2012. Whether or not she can build on that is the key to whether she can be competitive.
Mike in Maryland:
Palin said she's stepping down to stop the ethics charges because she can't effectively govern while defending herself during her entire term. If she's not in office, the charges won't affect her ability to govern the state.
Obama has a huge staff dedicated solely to dealing with negative publicity, as most presidents do. Palin didn't have that as governor, and she refused to spend state resources on a big public relations department to deal with it. Palin had two PR people and was sick about the money being wasted to fight all these stupid allegations.
Palin is not going to be running in 2012. She will luridly dangle the idea of her running because it gets her more attention now. Instead, Palin will be full-time in the lower 48, fundraising for R candidates and taking in some personal spending money on the side.
Her "shows" - ostensibly speeches and dinners, will be full of crazy shit of the sort we're now used to, and establishment Republicans will use this fact to disown what she says, despite feeding her the crazy lines.
I think Palin will be good at this. It will have all the "dress up glamor" of campaigning, but with no obligation to answer the questions of the media (and no McCain campaign managers restraining her maverickyness). When the Palin fundraising freakshow appears in your swing district, you can count on it making a big splash, and also making big money for the white dude with the R by his name.
david h, I am not so sure, the way Palin has acted since resigning makes me think that she is at least thinking about, if not yet planning on running in 2012. I suspect she will be very visible in certain areas next year, and I think if her candidates do well, I think she may well jump in the game. This is not to say she should, or that she would do a good job, or anything of that nature. Just that she certainly hasn't given up on the Presidency.
and Grog, thats why politicians have press officers and publicity folks. Maybe Palin might have a slightly different idea of the value of message control now. Either that or she will have no hope in 2012. Message management isn't some luxury, in the modern world it is a vital part of the political process, for better or worse.
Berkeley, I'm a Paul supporter, and not poor. I think Palin is one of the worst people for any level of politics other than fundraiser or motivational speaker.
I also supported Obama.
"...small donors have a way of turning into activists and, ultimately, voters"? No, Nate, they don't do that on their own. It doesn't happen unless there is an organization sufficiently experienced in the strategies and tactics of political or community organizing to turn them into activists and donors. And as we know, Ms. Palin has nothing but contempt for organizers. Her operation assumes that tea-bagging is political action. It isn't.
Check it out. MSNBC just quoted this article on it's First Read page. And to think all this time I thought Chuck Todd was snubbing 538. Way to go Nate.
count me in as one of the people who hates Palin, loves Nate, but is still quite irked at the title of this blog entry. Yes, I realize it was likely accidental. But now you know -- it's still not an appropriate title. Leave it to the lesser blogs to make jokes like this about her.
I see Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Ralph Nader as niche candidates each with a very small number fervent supporters.
I would like to see the demographic and geographic breakout of who is supporting Palin. My gut says her support comes from 8 States.
Any consideration Palin as a serious candidate is an absurd notion.
Nate, your analysis is a bit off. Palin has been governor and has done only 1 or 2 fundraising events to date so its not surprising she doesn't have many big donors (because she hasn't courted many of them). As for Romney, fundraising is all he does so i would expect him to have a good half year (plus he also has mainted his national org of fundraisers).
A better comparision will be the second half of the year when both candidates will be able to travel, fundraise and campaign for candidates.
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