The problem with allowing contributors to pay processing fees is the broader legal principle it seems to imply. Credit card transaction fees are a cost of fundraising. If we allow campaigns to outsource the cost of processing transactions, its hard to see how how other costs associated with fundraising can't be paid by the donor as well. Fundraiser salaries, the cost of hosting events, acquiring lists and so on. It adds up to one big loophole that could allow donors who max out to increase their donations.

It's not a huge loophole, and it wouldn't destroy the effectiveness of contribution limits by itself. But enough tiny loopholes that allow big donors to increase their contributions by several hundred dollars each, and you'll vastly increase the distance between what small donors can give and what large donors can give.

If a donor attending a big dinner can max out and pay for his share of the the catering costs, venue rental, fundraiser fees and travel expenses, that might add $200 to his donation. But that's four more small donors who have to give $50 a pop to balance out that donor's influence. This isn't about public financing, this is about insuring the integrity of current contribution limits, which even you argue are essential to the current system.

I disagree that criticizing Obama's lack of campaign experience is out of bounds. The fact that he's never run a competative general election campaign is a serious issue that Democrats should take into account.

Saying "I'm more electable because I take positions the base disagrees with" is obviously triangulating and self-defeating. But I don't think worrying about Obama's ability to take a punch falls into this category.

Who is BISC?

Right, so the trick to freeing up all that cash is convincing Meehan that the good will he would earn from helping out his fellow house Dems would more that compensate for the lose of a few million.

Is Netroots support in the MA Senate primary worth four million dollars? Might just be.

Most to maintain a skeleton campaign staff, but like Fran says the district offices are paid for my the taxpayer. Any more than 200k is excessive for the kind of campaigns staff they need to maintain.

1/5 of that cash is Meehan

1/2 is in the hands of just 6 Reps (Meehan, Markley, Andrews, Cramer, Costello, Neal).

I imagine the Mass Reps are stockpiling it to run for Senate when either Kennedy retires or Kerry runs for Prez again (which will be a hell of a primary battle). Andrews I'm sure was holding onto his in hopes that Menendez would implode and the NJ Dems would have to pull another Torecelli. Not sure about Costello and Cramer.

Indicating that the netroots would look more favorably on any future runs for higher office would probablly help. Ot shouldn't be hard to show them that it's better for their future ambition to give up the cash now than to sit on it for years to come.

I'm less offended by those who have less than 200k in their accounts. They wat to keep up a credible threat to remain unopposed, and even a dormant camapign committee has some costs. But dumping a couple of Meehan's millions into this race could be huge. I mean, that's four well funded house challenges right there.

I'm pretty sure he never had a Presidential committee. All of th emoney he has raised so far is in his Forward Together Pac, which has been giving all along. The only difference you might see is less focus on Iowa and NH candidates.

It's a concern. But the Republicans have precious little time to change the national dynamics of this cycle. Foleygate has now essentially taken away their message control for 2 weeks.

Those KY-04 numbers are also a little wacky, and very dissapointing if true.

You say "I'm not quite ready to rank this race "likely Democrat" -- but I'm getting close. " In the Colorado description - even though you have it ranked as Likely Democrat. I think Likely Democrat is jsut about right for that one, which is great (Denver 2008 anyone?).

Also, might as I'd like to belive that Rhode Island really is a toss-up, It looks like two of the last three polls there had the Republican up by double digits. Is there something here not being captured by the polling?

Like I posted in teh other thread, but no one seemed to care, there's already good academic research on political markets. Peoiple should read it before making sweeping statements about their predictive value, especially when citing exceptional annecdotes as evidence of market failure.

The Foley scandal isn't the kind of thing that markets are supposed to be good at predicing. With the exception of a few people at ABC, no one knew the Foley scandal was going to break at the time that it broke. Everyone who knew about Foleys transgressions thought they had it covered up pretty well, and reasonably expected that it would not come out until after the election, if at all.

We can see that the knowledge that the Foley scandal was going to break when it did spent no time as private information is the reaction of the House Republicans. If they'd had time to take advantage of this information on the markets, they would have also had time to formulate a better response. The fact that they didn't have a better response indicates that they didn't expect it to be a factor in the election.

Again, the important piece of information here is not the fact that Foley was a pervert, but the fact that the Foley scandal would break before the election. That information went from "nobody knows it" to totaly public way to fast for the market to have any advantage over pundits in general.

Saying the markets are wrong for reacting to the Foley scandal instead of predicting it is like saying the Dow was wrong for reacting to the Sep 11th attacks instead of predicting them. In both cases game changing information became massivley public very quickly, and teh markets reacted accordingly.

Living up to your chosen name there Elitest John?

If we're choosing our convention location based on where DNC delegates can have the best vacation, we don't deserve to win in 2008.

Nice annecdotes Chris, but solid, academic research has shown that these markets are pretty damn good.

http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/faculty/jberg/p apers/ResultsIEM_2003Mar.pdf

http://www.atypon-link.com/AEAP/doi/abs/ 10.1257/0895330041371321

Might not be able to access the second paper unless you have access to a university network.

It's likely that the Iowa Caucases produce highly deviant results because they're simply harder to predict, as are all presidential nominating contests.

Excellent news. Hard to see how its not Denver now. I love NYC, but Colorado is so much more important.