A new report from the Center for Competitive Politics found that concerns over the presence of nonprofit organizations that do not report their donors (ominously called “dark money”) are “overblown.” The report shows that:

• Dark money” declined in both absolute and relative terms from the last presidential election cycle, down to $184 million from $309 million.
• “Dark money” accounted for only 2.9% of all campaign expenditures in 2015-2016.
• Nonprofits have never accounted for more than 5% of all election campaign spending in any election cycle.

Has technology changed how campaigns talk to voters? Sure. Campaigns used to spend millions on TV and radio, but with new Big Data, and studies showing that personal contact is much more effective in campaigning, many more campaigns are returning to traditional “door-knocks” to contact voters.

One of the most effective “ground games” in recent elections was Rob Portman’s Senate re-election campaign last year. Originally viewed as a tight race, on election night, 2016, Portman ran away with 58% of the vote, in traditionally swing-state Ohio.

His campaign manager, Corey Bliss told the Los Angeles Times that he would run the same kind of ground game: “go into a competitive district early, identify the swing voters, find out what they care about and then talk about those topics consistently in ads and online.” The difference is that now Bliss will do it independent of the campaigns his PAC will support; Bliss now heads up the Congressional Leadership Fund, an independent PAC already mobilizing for 2018.

Why? Because Bliss expects a good ground game to “sway the outcome by as much as five percentage points.”

“This model really works. It requires a lot of time, a lot of effort and lot of money, but I think it’s a worthwhile investment.”

From the New York Times: “Of all the gross-out stories about food that have broken the Internet in recent years — maggots in mushrooms, ‘wood chips‘ in shredded cheese, bug bits in chocolate bars — nothing has captured the public imagination more than ‘pink slime.'”

Well, yeah. Just the name … But this is another instance of “she who defines the terms of the debate, wins.”

Apparently the stuff, formally known as “lean, finely-textured beef,” not only is not bad for you, it’s safe to eat, according to Scientific American, and healthier than the real hamburger its mixed with. Leaner, cleaner, and with less micro-organisms.

But because the 2012 outcry was successful in dramatically reducing consumer demand for the product, hurting its developer, now ABC News faces a multi-billion defamation dollar lawsuit. The jury trial, in South Dakota state court, commences this week, and is expected to last eight weeks.

There’s a new controversy over whether Ellen Weintraub, who has been a Federal Election Commission commissioner for 13 years (ten of which as a hold-over after her term expired because they couldn’t find another Democratic nominee), should step down. It started on Feb. 10, when Weintraub issued a statement on FEC letterhead challenging President Trump’s claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire, escalated when Cause of Action, an outside investigatory organization, filed a request for the FEC Inspector General to determine whether Weintraub’s statement violated federal law, and became ridiculous when Weintraub shouted that she would not be a victim and began posting YouTube videos of herself leading chants at anti-Trump rallies (although only 228 people have viewed it). Bob Bauer offered a defense, but it was much more an attack on Cause of Action (“funded by the Koch Brothers”! Oh, horrors!) than a substantive buttress of Weintraub’s position.

Now former FEC Chair and current law school professor Brad Smith, who also helms the Center for Competitive Politics, has called for Weintraub to resign. Smith cites a variety of Weintraub’s mis-steps, but concludes that she has now disqualified herself for a variety of FEC inquiries. “When Commissioner Weintraub engages in ad hominem public attacks on the lawyers representing parties before her agency, repeatedly criticizes the President on matters outside her jurisdiction — or worse, within it — speaks publicly about pending MURs, and announces in advance her views on issues she will have to vote on, it is a problem, not just for her and the Agency she represents, but for the American public.”

Weintraub is a sad story and really should go or be removed. But the reality is that the FEC already has one vacancy, left when Ann Ravel left her seat on the Commission. Ravel, like Weintraub, engaged in inappropriate behavior, including saying that “my role in the commission is not to apply constitutional principles”, and even irked moderate members of the Commission.  Her position has not been filled.

There’s an old adage in politics, that “you can’t beat somebody with nobody.” The most recent presidential campaign may have undercut that wisdom, but the point is that Weintraub is not likely to resign. She will have to be replaced. Let’s hope it gets done sooner, rather than later.