I know exactly what it means.
It is unethical to exploit the sensation of Abrams’ candidacy, in a manner which siphons of funds from her, to you.
That is exactly what is happening here. That is the entire point of what Harris is doing.
The fact that you are pretending like her actions aren’t unethical, is mind blowing to me.
Your guess is absurd, and not even remotely plausible.
Abrams would have asked to have Harris direct people to her OWN fundraiser. Or Harris could have set up the link to direct 100% of the funds to abrams by default.
Kamala Harris is more famous than Stacey Abrams. Harris is a sitting senator and a top contender to get the presidential nomination. You can view this as Harris appropriating Abrams’s fame to raise money, but I view it as Harris using her own reputation to help Abrams.
It can definitely be seen as crass, especially if you entered this conversation not liking Harris much. ‘Unethical’ is worthy of ridicule, though, unless you can point to some actual laws or guidelines with regard to campaign fundraising which are being violated in letter or in spirit. I don’t think there are any. This is Harris taking advantage of an opportunity to raise money for them both.
I doubt Stacey Abrams is upset. She surely knew of this in advance and approved it.
I agree with your post but this little chunk isn’t really fair. It’s an overconfident overstatement (i.e. the Timex style we know and love) but we’re not here to ridicule.
What this has shown me is that you guys really just don’t see it. This is why our country and it’s politics are the way it is, and it clearly isn’t going to get better.
You guys are just going to become the same thing as the GOP, given the chance.
What this has shown me is that you’re unwilling to recognize moral complexity. Carve out one side of an argument and not give an inch. Both extremes drowning out reasonable middle ground. It’s basically what the news does now.
I think we see it. We just don’t agree with your assessment. Do you see ours?
It’s pretty normal for people fundraising for others to take a cut of those funds. It’s disclosed in a way that’s impossible to miss. It’s a bit mercenary, sure, but Harris isn’t raising money for cancer kids. Abrams is not a charity. They’re both politicians trying to get themselves and allies elected. It’s a bit silly to be upset on Abram’s behalf when she likely approved this.
What is it you are looking for people to say here, what concrete action are you wanting people to take?
Because from my perspective, I don’t like this. But I also don’t see it as any more or less problematic than a hundred other issues regarding campaign financing. which is to say it is all a problem, and this is not a particularly ethically or morally different situation than sitting legislators having to constantly make phone calls to raise money for both their own campaigns and the national parties.
So I don’t see what is firing you up so much about this particular thing. If you want to go to town on the entire structure of campaign financing and the perversions that the financial costs of elections has created in an effort to burn down the entire edifice and start anew? Pass me the gasoline compadre. If you are wanting me to get specifically upset at Harris and call for her resignation? Hard pass.
Not because I like the move, it’s crass for sure. But because I can virtually guarantee that every sitting member of congress has engaged in a materially similar joint fundraising operation.
It reminds me of program installations where software piggybacks on other software and you have to opt out of the secondary install. And sometimes they make it really easy to miss the little box you have to un-check. It’s better when this doesn’t happen. It’s worse when it’s really sneaky. But it’s how the world works now and we all wish it wasn’t. [SIGH]
This is what they mean about seeing how sausage is made.
Political fundraising is a necessary but icky business. CBS did a story on it a few years ago, later added to by John Oliver and other reporters.
DC lawmakers are expect to raise about $18000 a day. They spend four hours a day on the phone, personally calling up potential donors. They can’t do this on federal property, so both parties have off-site call centers in DC that they can use. To gain access, lawmakers must also fundraise for the national party.
So when your friendly Congressional rep calls you up to chat, and you agree to send him or her a check, listen to the fine print. It’s possible you are actually donating to the DNC. Is that unethical too?
Just to not defend it. To not excuse it, or come up with increasingly absurd explanations, “no, really, it helps Abrams!” (No, it doesn’t . I’ve already pointed out what the truly altruistic alternatives would have been.)
Seriously, you guys don’t see it. Or you don’t care. Harris is on “your team”, so you are going to defend her actions, no matter what.
I’ve already seen this movie, i know the ending.
It’s the reaction from you guys, to instinctively defend something purely out of partisanship.
Because that’s what this is.
And that is, above all else, the fundamental problem with politics in America. It is the one thing which will break our country, because it means that there is no objective truth or reality by which anything can be judged. Everything is judged based on who committed those actions, not the actions themselves.
The act here is nowhere near the worst we have seen from Trump and other politicians, but the motivation to defend it comes from the exact same place. And you guys aren’t idiots, i don’t think you’re bad people. But you are doing the same thing that i saw those on the right do.
You don’t need to dissembly become Republicans. You don’t need to hate Harris. You just need to honestly call balls and strikes. Don’t excuse the small stuff. Make your leaders apologize and not do those things in the future. Because otherwise they absolutely will, and they will just do worse and worse things, until you do something.
Why do you demand that politicians behave altruistically? It’s nice when it happens, but I don’t really expect it. Nor is self-interest an ethical breach. Our entire economy is based on it.
No, dude. I don’t particularly care about Harris, to me she is just another Dem pol. So there is nothing “instinctive” about this. And I strongly suspect that Republicans do the exact same thing. I still don’t care.
Certainly not the case of what I’ve been doing. I’m treating it no differently than the 1000 a plate dinners that GOP congress people host during their fundraising efforts. Or the call centers that @magnet mentioned, I believe the NPR show This American Life covered it as well.
What I refuse to do is attack Harris specifically. I’d much rather focus my irritation at the structure than the individual here. Because the whole thing stinks, and that is much more just than going after an individual.
So I think you are reading more ‘defense’ into this than there really is. My position is not ‘this is fine’ but rather ‘this is not fine, but the problem is not Harris, but rather the entire edifice upon which campaign financing is built, and therefore I reserve no specific animosity for Harris, or even any GOP politician, over such joint fundraising efforts and instead reserve my ire for the financial realities which demand this kind of behavior in the first place’
Yeah, calling this “partisan” is just a bad, dumb argument.
It’s institutional. And it absolutely sucks.
On this, I have a feeling that an aide for Harris was told to set up something for Abrams, and did so the way that aide is used to doing it, because it seems like SOP for politicians on both sides. And that aide was probably unaware of the Avenatti kerfuffle last month, or thought it wasn’t a big deal for Harris.
Lesson learned. I’d almost expect ActBlue to realize the issue and do something to make it more explicitly clear AND make it so that this is in no way a default or easy to set setting on a fundraising campaign. Like…you can still do this if you want to, but you have to REALLY know you want to and jump through a few interfaces and clicks to do so.
It doesn’t siphon off funds unless you think that all those people were planning to give money to Abrams prior to this tweet.
Just giving her money directly is the truly altruistic alternative. From Harris’s own money not her campaign funds. How could she act so non-altruistically?
This doesn’t even approach the level of unethical behavior inherent in campaign finance. Let’s start cleaning things up by convincing people not to do actively harmful stuff rather than jumping on them for insufficiently helpful things.
I’ve seen plenty of folks say they understand where you’re coming from on this. I guess you’re just ignoring them so you can stick with the vicious, uncompromising approach for some unknown reason.
Anyway, it’s just as obvious that you don’t see the counterpoint. You could make it more obvious that you do. Reason! Nuance!
Nobody is defending the practice… it’s far from ideal. Yet another example of money ruining everything. But with human beings, that whole “what’s in it for me?” thing starts at around age 2.
