Campaign Finance

Money Well Spent?

How much money was pissed away by the Right Wing smearing Obamacare before the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the law is constitutional? According to the New York Times, at least $235 million.

In all, about $235 million has been spent on ads attacking the law since its passage in March 2010, according to a recent survey by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. Only $69 million has been spent on advertising supporting it. Just $700,000 of that comes from the Obama campaign, and none of its ads mentioning the law are currently being broadcast, said Elizabeth Wilner, vice president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “It explains, in a nutshell, why polling shows attitudes about the law to be at best mixed,” she said.

And what do they have to show for it? Mixed attitudes. Attitudes that will likely rebound in the absence of the dark money machine whose sole focus was smearing the law.

Democrats could have spent more to promote the law before the ruling, but that doesn't matter now. What matters now is winning in November.

Because the Republicans will inevitably hang themselves with "repeal and replace," (or more likely just "repeal") almost all Democratic spending from now until November will, by proxy, be a promotion of Obamacare.