The first priority for the new Democratic administration should be public financing of elections.

[More Than A Feeling]

Public financing is a fully voluntary system where candidates who receive a certain number of $5 donations receive a campaign funded at the taxpayer's expense (it needs to be voluntary under the Supreme Court ruling Buckley v. Valeo). If a publicly funded campaign is facing a wealthy self-funder, or a candidate who has not volunteered for public financing, they get boosted spending to be competitive.

And they are competitive. The governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, was re-elected with public financing. In Maine, 84% of the legislature were publicly-funded candidates. In New Jersey, every winner in a state legislative district that participated in their public financing pilot program was publicly funded. In North Carolina, five of the six winning judicial candidates had public financing. So it's worked in all three branches at the state level.

Because of Clean Elections, Arizona and Maine were able to expand their public healthcare programs, without being blocked by the drug and insurance companies. If Democrats want their public healthcare programs to go through, the knowledge that they wouldn't have to come hat-in-hand to the industry later could put some steel in their spines. Same thing when it comes to the defense industry, Iraq, and the military in general, or the energy and auto industries when it comes to environmental progress.

Lock out the lobbyists and their checks, and it helps everyone, including business. They won't be squeezed anymore by greedy politicians, and polititicans wouldn't feel obligated to take money from them in order to win re-election.

For more about this system, including answers to such objections as "I don't want my money going to politicians I disagree with" see this FAQ by Common Cause: http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7B8A2D1D15-C65A-46D4-8CBB-2073440751B5%7D/WHAT%20IS%20PF.PDF

(Except where noted, the information in this post is taken from www.publiccampaign.org)

What do you think? Should we try to get some grassroots pressure to make this happen first, or would our energy be more profitably be directed elsewhere? To give you an example of something that we could do, taking out Mitch McConnell would go a long way. He's basically the Republican bank for lobbyists, and that's pretty much it. As such, he's the staunchest opponent of campaign finance reform, even going so far as to antagonize John McCain. Get rid of him, and passage in the senate gets a LOT easier!

[msongs]

1. IMO it should be cancelling all of bush's signing statements nt

[More Than A Feeling]

2. That's a good suggestion. Perhaps if people don't agree that PF should come first

and make alternate suggestions, we could put up a poll.

[madrchsod]

3. jesus that would take a couple of weeks just finding them....

you know there has to be some buried that no one has seen...