Got ya! 
We’ll not really decline, but delay acceptance to gain parity with the Bush campaign on Fed dollars to spend. Doing this, of course, raises other questions. Can you legally postpone accepting a nomination at the party’s convention (“Thank you, but let me think about it for oh, 5 weeks or so. I’ll get back to you”)? If this path is chosen, will it delay the selection of a VP candidate? Is this a good strategy? Will it help or hinder Kerry in his quest for the presidency?
Your thoughts?
He’s all but nominated now. All he has to do is choose a candidate for VP.
I don’t see how this can hurt him. It’s already in the bag.
:rolleyes: Aren’t you not supposed to do that with thread titles?
Anyway, I think this is a trial balloon and ultimately he’ll end up accepting the nomination in July without any trickiness.
Speaking of the VP nomination, when is that supposed to come? Kerry said it would be before the convention, right? I thought he gave a vague timeframe that should be coming up soon…
I wouldn’t say it’s trickiness at all. It seems to me to be a very level headed way to get around, what is, IMO a rediculous rule. Why should one party have to worry about a campaign budget 5 weeks before the other? With the amount of time left, if Kerry accepts on time, it means he has to spend roughly 25% less per month than Bush during the rest of the campaign. And that doesn’t count the 5 weeks where Bush can spend whatever he wants. In my opinion, the cap on finances should be instated for all presidential candidates, starting after the FINAL convention.
Jman
1)Why is this coming out now? Didn’t the Democrats take the decision to have their convention a long time ago? Shouldn’t someone have noticed the difference between theirs and the Republican convention and noticed the effect that campaign laws would have?
2)Whatevery happens, neither side will be hampered much in their spending during the campaign. Remember that PACs can still buy adds and say whatever they want. Individuals too. So, while Bush and Kerry will be limited to 75 million between the time each is nominated and the election, one analyst suggested that they would probably spend closer to 200 or 300 million.
3)Is it possible that Kerry is doing something shrewd here? Might it be possible for him to say something along the lines of “I will not delay my nomination. I will accept it at the appropriate time and spend only the amount of money alloted to me by law. I would point out, the hypocrisy of Bush spending money as if he were in a primary when he has been unopposed the whole time.” Just a thought.
I agree with you about the Democratic fumble. I hope any Democrat, or even Ralph Nader, beats GW, but this sort of failure to plan ahead doesn’t speak well of the Democrats ability to manage Iraq does it?
To quote the Mayor’s daughter in The Music Man, Eee Gods!!
I do believe that the Democrats announced their nominating convention first, and took the traditional third-week-of-July position that the out party takes. The Republicans, however, moved their nominating convention back two weeks from the middle of August, the traditional time for the “in” party, to early September, in an attempt to sleezily exploit Sept. 11, no doubt.
I think this is a good move by Kerry.
As some of the articles about this note, at that time, the Democrats would have been operating under the assumption that whoever won would have opted to take public financing. Kerry (like Dean) did not.
Can’t you spend the money now, and have the campaign actually run after the convention? Is there some sort of law against purchasing media time in advance?
I can’t believe that there isn’t a way to do that.
Tris
spectrum stole my post. Waah.
This ain’t gonna happen. I don’t think it’s a half bad idea, but it’s going to be extremely difficult to pull off. It comes across as a sneaky trick that would be very hard to explain properly.
Good story on the in’s/out’s of this strategy here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/22/MNGMT6QD0N1.DTL
[Totally irrelevant nitpick]I believe that’s “Ye Gods!”[/Totally irrelevant nitpick]
The timing of the two major parties’ conventions isn’t set by law (although laws bear on it somewhat) but the tradition of the ‘out’ party having its convention in mid to late July, with the ‘in’ party having its convention in mid-August, is a matter of long standing.
Bush opened up the gaming of this, of course, when his crew had the idea to postpone the GOP convention to early September, to more closely coincide with the third anniversary of 9/11.
One avenue I’m sure the Kerry campaign is considering is to find a way for the Democratic Party to postpone his nomination via some technicality, while still doing all the usual hoopla.
Don’t you think Rove would like to have that decision back? The one about putting the nomination in New York, close to 9/11, and even with some events (now relocated) planned for Ground Zero? Expect to see the carrier-landing footage a lot, too - but not by the Bush campaign.
I think anyone here who thinks this will be seen by the public as anything more than a fundraising maneuver is paying too much attention. The amount of money that campaigns require is just an accepted fact of life; the only thing to get upset about is if the field is not level. The FEC may investigate, and may get around to a post-election wrist-slap that nobody will notice.
It does, though, underscore how the teeth have been removed from US election laws such as McCain-Feingold in the process of getting them passed. They’re so easily circumvented by maneuvers like this that electoral reform is doomed to be a continuous rather than step-change process.
This seems like an absurd aspect of the law, and it’s hard to believe no one anticipated this exact situation when it was passed. How stupid can these legislators be…
In terms of scheduling, it strikes me that all you have to do is schedule the nominating vote to take place at the very end of the convention, after Kerry’s speech, instead of before. The speech therefore becomes sort of a here’s-what-I’ll-do-if-I-am-elected deal, and the nomination ends up getting accepted some time later. No biggie, so far as I can tell.
An interesting point in all of this is that the parties get lots of taxpayer money for their conventions.
If Kerry removes the nomination from the nominating convention, the rationale for public financing of it goes out the window as well. And the Republicans can more easily absorb a loss of public money for this purpose, IMHO.
You bet! Less than 2 months until the election and I bet they were thinking that New Yorker’s would be greeting them with open arms (sort of like what they thought would happen in Iraq. :smack:). But I think now they are going to face massive demonstrations. Last I heard, the administration of Republican Mayor Bloomberg was trying to deny a permit for a big demonstration in Central Park because they don’t want the grass and plants to be ruined. [ROFLOL]. Do I smell the makings of some major civil disobedience? Hmmm…
Why, perv!
Shocked I am that you would forget that the campaigns and PACs are prevented from coordinating their efforts! Of course no one would possibly violate that fine, upstanding and well-respected law!
blink blink
What?