The big news today is the meeting of the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee to hopefully find a conclusion to Michigan and Florida’s delegates. Senator Obama offered a deal.

Rep. Robert Wexler, speaking for the Obama team, tells DNC meeting the campaign will agree to seating Florida’s delegation at one-half value. Plan would net Clinton 19 delegates.

The other day I noted that the DNC Convention Committee was having financial troubles. Today the Denver Post reports that the party is considering convention cuts to make up for the downfall.

Committee sources say they are working with the Democratic National Convention Committee to consider lowering the $55 million in private cash and donated services that must be raised to bring the convention to town. The cuts would be made to the many parties the host committee is obligated to throw for the delegations and the news media, and other hospitality functions not tied to production aspects inside the convention hall.

“There have been no specific decisions made,” host committee spokesman Chris Lopez said. “We’re always identifying costs and weighing them against our anticipated revenue.”

While Democrats are still confident they will raise the money needed the shortfall is an interesting sign of weakness for the DNC which is struggling while their two primary candidates are raising never-before-seen amounts. Is this a sign that Dems are holding out until they know their chosen candidate will win or just an anomaly that will be resolved with some publicity and some help from high profile fundraisers?

The New York Post reports that actress and liberal activist Susan Sarandon has said she will move to either Italy or Canada if John McCain is elected by says she has “faith in the American people” that they won’t vote the Arizona Senator into the highest office. Sarandon’s comments are reminescent of those made in 2000 by some celebrities who promised to bail on the country if George W. Bush was elected president, sparking a public outcry from conservatives then and in 2004 who started an outcry against what they saw as “liberal Hollywood” invading politics.

Alec Baldwin was famously chastised after a 2000 interview with his then wife Kim Basinger who said her husband vowed to leave the country if George Bush became president. Though Baldwin claims he actually meant to suggest “it would be a good time to leave the country”, he never left. Neither did Robert Altman who did say he would move to Paris, but never did and later tried to suggest he meant “Paris, Texas” though he did not move there either.

So chilling was the backlash from many conservatives against actors in 2000 and again in 2004 that once public celebrity endorsers like George Clooney have been keeping silent this cycle believing their endorsements might actually hurt the candidates in parts of America.

My take? For all the talk of this being a “change” election every day looks and sounds more like those in 2000 and 2004.

While Barack Obama has publicly scorned Senators Clinton and McCain for taking lobbyist money and keeping them in their employ, Newsweek reports that the Senator’s own lobbyist ties may hit very close to home. David Axelrod, according to the report, was the mastermind of a public relations campaign used to lobby Illinois lawmakers. CORE or the Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity, was created by ASK Public Strategies which ran television ads that never revealed they were created for their client Illinois utility company Commonwealth Edison. The brainchild of the campaign was David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager.

CORE has publicly acknowledged receiving money from ComEd for its media campaign but did not include in the ads late last year any reference that the big utility was a financial sponsor.

Quinn said such an omission was a deliberate attempt by CORE and ComEd to deceive the public. (Electric Utility Week Feb 19th, 2007)

Eventually CORE voluntarily began running disclaimers on the ads funded by the utility, though it claimed no Illinois law or court decision demanded it do so.

While Obama has regularly demonized lobbyists, he has often used the term as a catch-all while ignoring that many corporations, public relations companies, unions and organizations (think PETA, ACLU) employ lobbyists or themselves lobby local, state and federal governments.

Axelrod sees a contrast between his lobbying and that conducted by those on McCain’s staff, including the fact that he doesn’t work in D.C. and he says he never sat down with lawmakers and personally lobbied them on behalf of a corporate client. He told Huffington Post:

“What I do is make ads and try to involve people in the process, people outside the halls of legislatures or city councils, to get involved in public issues. What lobbyists do is go behind closed doors and try to influence lawmakers sometimes with implied promises of support for their campaign and so on, It is fundamentally different. I have never lobbied a politician on behalf of a client in my life. And I certainly have never talked to Obama about any client. It is a red herring put up by a campaign that is being run by the most powerful corporate lobbyist in Washington in Charlie Black and being managed by a corporate lobbyist.”

So does the intent to influence lawmakers decisions for pay by corporations make you a lobbyist?

While researching a future blog post I ran across this quote from David Axelrod given to Michael Slackman for a New York Times piece. Axelrod said of Hillary Clinton:

The theory, said David Axelrod, a Democratic political consultant based in Chicago, is that while a polarizing figure like Mrs. Clinton may motivate the opposition, she could also expand the Democrats’ base. ”If you accept the premise that we are a polarized country then part of the challenge is to maximize your base,” Mr. Axelrod said. ”I think she, as much as anybody, is in a position to do that.”

This picture obviously contrasts a bit with Axelrod and the Obama campaigns primary theme:

I would be the first to say a lot of those attacks against her were unfair and were a manifestation of an ugliness in our politics. But the fact is, she is a polarizing figure in our politics.

And if she were the nominee she would go into the general election with the highest negatives of any nominee that we’ve had in history. (Axelrod quoted by CBS in 2007)

Axelrod also offered the following advice:

Mr. Axelrod was an adviser in the presidential campaign of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

PRIORITY — Get re-elected. Create a vision for the future. She must help the party redefine itself by focusing on issues, like globalization, as they relate to the middle class.

She should dive into health care as an offensive and defensive maneuver. This issue will be used against her. She can’t run away from it. We’re hurtling toward a crisis and she can say, ”I may not have approached this in precisely the right way, but I had no doubt then or now that health care is a crisis we have to face.”

ABORTION — Exit polls show Americans are moderately pro-choice. She should promote adoption and, yes, abstinence as part of an array of options through which the government reduces the number of abortions.

GAY MARRIAGE — Sixty percent of the voters said that they supported civil unions or gay marriage. It’s not the killer issue some have painted it as.

TERRORISM — If you’re trying to be the first female president, a premium will be attached to proving yourself as thoughtful as anyone on this issue. She’s got a wonderful platform on the Armed Services Committee.

CHANCES — There is a caricature of her out there, and she needs to introduce America to the real Hillary Clinton.

But she’d be the person to beat if she ran. Once you have the nomination anything can happen.

SUGGESTED THEME — ”Keeping America and the middle class strong in a changing world.”

Well in a sign that Hillary Clinton could well be living in a parallel universe her campaign has released a post-primary schedule giving reporters the ability to sign up travel through June 6th, three days after the last primary.

When asked about the availability Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson noted:

“There are a lot of places for us to go between June 4 and November,”

While the headlines thus far have focused on the monstrous money raising of the Democratic candidates and a light enthusiasm in fund raising for Republicans, something entirely different has been happening in the background. Yes both Clinton and Obama are breaking records with individual donors giving millions to their campaigns while McCain and his former Republican rivals, Ron Paul aside, had only a light take in their piggy banks. The other story though is contained in the accounts of the parties where Democrats are actually lagging far behind the Republicans.

The Conventions
According to The New York Times the DNC’s Denver Host Committee is lagging behind in its convention fund raising falling $15 Million short of its $40.6 million goal for the event. The total amount needs to be raised by June 16th, while the party is confident the money will come in, the situation can be contrasted with the RNC which is on track to raise the $58 million it has budgeted for its convention.

The article cites the prolonged Democratic primary race as one of the potential causes of this lack of money.

Equalizing the Candidates

The Republican National Committee has enough money on hand to match Obama’s bankroll. The RNC has traditionally given completely to their nominee for the general election fight and ended April with $40.6 million on hand, ten times the amount reported by the Democrats. The McCain campaign considers this money as their own, adding this figure up with their own cash on hand to say they actually ended April with an edge.

In addition, Obama is still using his resources to fight off Hillary Clinton in the prolonged nomination fight.

Things to Consider
While the Republicans may not be in the dire financial shape that many presume there are still many factors to consider. Obama and Clinton now have donor databases that can be matched in a general election campaign to find not only the nominees campaign but also the DNC. Once the fight is over many of the small donors who gave for the primary can be tapped for a general. If Clinton supporters do make the leap to Obama, he could be boasting a small army of givers.

With that said, the massive media attention given to the candidates, the predominance of FOX News, talk radio and a slow but growing Republican Internet machine could give the McCain camp the ability to attack Obama with little to no money paid. If revelations about Obama’s past continue to flow up through these mediums.

Obama can obviously use his millions to build up get-out-the-vote efforts and strike McCain in Republican strongholds, likewise the vast apathy with the Bush administration might well give the candidate the votes he needs regardless of money spent.

In short, we may have an election where dollars could either be even or may not ultimately matter. We shall see.

Senator Barack Obama made a gaffe while speaking yesterday.

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

Not so good. Found via Malkin, Powerline, Jim Hoft

Featuring former Senate Dem leader Tom Daschle

Senator Obama is facing increased criticism from rival John McCain over his pledged willingness to hold unconditional talks with the leaders of enemy nations, including Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama attempted to play down the “unconditional” notion of meeting with such a leader saying “There’s no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he was actually in power. He’s not the most powerful person in Iran.”

While the McCain camp is saying Obama is “backtracking” on his position. In recent weeks the Obama team evolved the Senator’s stance by saying while there would be no “conditions” there would be “preparations” made by his staff before such meetings would take place.

I don’t personally know how much you can count waiting until the election is over as a condition to his “unconditional” stance, as it doesn’t place any onus on the Iranian president or the people, simply a timetable for the Obama team, but it does reflect a slow evolution of the senator’s position. For weeks his campaign seemed to believe this issue would highlight their differences with the Bush administration and speak to his abilities as a “change” candidate. Now it seems they are moving every so slightly away from that thinking.