McCain-Feingold Helps Democrats Stay Competitive - John Harwood WSJ

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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107705954217431943-search,00.html?collection=autowire%2F30day&vql_string=feingold%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29

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The provision requires that television ads for Congress or president include an explicit endorsement by the candidate producing them, in voice and image.

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In the run-up to last month's Iowa caucuses, Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean launched an early round of attack ads that appeared to signal the start of another televised mud-wrestle. Both men fell from the front to the back of the Iowa pack. One reason the consequences were so severe was that voters knew who had gone negative from the candidates' own mouths.

No one has done it again --

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The result: John Kerry, the all-but-certain Democratic nominee after another expected primary win in Mr. Feingold's home state Tuesday night, would open the general election remarkably unscathed by advertising attacks.

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Mr. Feingold believed Democrats could create a new hard-money base of small donors. And now, courtesy of Mr. Dean's Internet-fueled campaign, it appears that they can.

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"It has returned our party to its grass-roots fund-raising base," Mr. Feingold says. Mr. Kerry, who salvaged his nomination hopes by tapping his personal wealth, had nothing to do with this. Yet he could be the beneficiary if he can make common cause with Mr. Dean and his legions of small donors.

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