McCain is viewed favorably by 56% and unfavorably by 40%. Obama’s ratings are 47% favorable and 51% unfavorable. For Clinton, those numbers are 45% favorable, 53% unfavorable.
It gets even more interesting when we look at details of the unfavorable/favorable ratings for just Clinton vs. Obama.
Opinions are more firmly established for the Democratic candidates than for McCain. Twenty percent (20%) have a Very Favorable opinion of the former First Lady while 33% have a Very Unfavorable view. For Obama, those numbers are 24% Very Favorable and 33% Very Unfavorable. By way of contrast, just 19% of voters nationwide have a Very Favorable opinion of McCain. Seventeen percent (17%) have a Very Unfavorable opinion.
Details of McCain's dealings have yet to be widely known. Ken Silverstein, writing in the latest Harper's, lays it out. McCain, champion of reform and founder of the "Reform Institute," is using his non-profit in ways which won't stand up well to much scrutiny in the coming campaign. Silverstein describes in detail, and with reference to lobbyists, Wall Street funders, telecommunications barons, just exactly how closely allied this nonprofit "reform institute" is to his campaign policy, his funds, and his staff.
During the first four years that the Institute operated, it focused almost exclusively on campaign-finance reform, McCain's signature issue. Although McCain stepped down as chairman of the Institute's advisory board in 2005, the nonprofit has continued to advance an agenda indistinguishable from his own. In a tax form filed in November 2006, the same month McCain announced the formation of his presidential exploratory committee, the Institute suddenly broadened its scope to include such "vital areas" as homeland security, global warming, an immigration -- issues that just so happened to be the struts of McCain's political platform. The Institute went on to aggressively lobby for the 2007 immigration reform bill, of which McCain was a leading proponent. It effort on this front was led by Juan Hernandez, a senior fellow at the Institute who went on leave last summer and now serves as outreach director for McCain '08. In January, the nonprofit brought in Donald Murphy, a prominent lobbyist and political consultant, to help promote the Institute's "critical public policy issues" in targeted states. Conveniently, these duties nicely overlap with Murphy's role as McCain's Maryland campaign coordinator.
The reformer John McCain claims to be a staunch opponent of "politics as usual." But by hiding behind an "independent" group that effective operates as an adjunct of his presidential campaign, and whose status allows his backers to far exceed the $5,000 cap on contributions to PAC's, the senator has shown his support for the political status quo. Will a McCain presidency finally drive money out of politics and sharply limit the influence of special-interest groups? The activities of his own Reform Institute seem to suggest, and rather emphatically, no.
We haven't even mentioned that little matter -- of concern to the Federal Election Commission -- of Senator McCain's accepting public funds for his campaign and then...
How about the latest news in today's Wall Street Journal on McCain's latest plan to rearrange -- for his own benefit -- rules and regulations governing how campaigns are funded?
Campaign manager Rick Davis released the details of the “McCain Victory 08” fund on Friday. He said the entity is a joint committee, combining the McCain campaign, the Republican National Committee and four key states under a “hybrid legal structure.”
The idea is to tap donors for more than the $2,300 limit set by campaign finance laws. Under legislation pushed by McCain in his role as a senator from Arizona, an individual can donate a maximum of $2,300 to a presidential primary campaign and the same amount to the general election campaign. Although McCain received the number of delegates necessary to secure the nomination in March, he will not be the party’s official nominee until the convention in September—so he is still running a primary campaign.
The new structure allows up to $70,000 in individual contributions by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds. The first $2,300 of that would go to McCain’s primary campaign. The Republican National Committee would receive $28,500 of the donation. The remaining funds would be divided equally, up to $10,000 a piece, among four states the campaign has designated as battlegrounds for November: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico.
Davis said those four states were selected because they “probably don’t have the capacity to fund directly out of their own organic resources in state.” He added: “They will benefit from a national fund raising effort that will help funnel money to those state Victory programs.”
The campaign also has individual Victory Fund programs in California, Ohio and Florida. Each of those states can also receive a maximum of $10,000 from an individual, Davis said.
Maybe some Democrats who think McCain is a good guy -- heck, maybe some Republicans who are tired of the deep and wide corruption drowning their party -- will label John McCain with "unfavorable" even as the Democratic party raises questions about McCain's probity over and over again in very unfavorable ads.
