Obama's political action committee has doled out more than $694,000 to superdelegates since 2005, the study found, and of the 81 who had announced their support for Obama, 34 had received donations totaling $228,000.You know, for a party that sued everything that moved over “unfair elections” and claiming that Bush won without the will of the people and have bumper stickers about stolen votes, they sure know how to set the example. This only reinforces my opinion that there is a smoke filled room somewhere waiting to determine the Dem nomination.
Clinton's political action committee has distributed about $195,000 to superdelegates, and only 13 of the 109 who had announced for her have received money, totaling about $95,000.
The party that claims to be THE 'One person, One vote' advocates sure is shady as hell.
3 comments:
Aaaaahhhhhh money. The lubricant that makes government work.
Yes. Republican campaigns never give to other Republican campaigns. Never happens.
Yes, Leadership PACs are Washington's inside dirty little tactic to buy favor within the ranks. But to not explain what they are, how they're used and that these are common practices is to not inform voters, it's misleading.
There are plenty of others in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, with greater or similar tallies who have nothing to do with national delegates, just an interest in leadership and actually introducing legislation. It is usually the most active legislators, the one's actually making things happen for us (believe it or not, but it's true!) with the highest war-chest activity.
People out there are actually believing these are personal payments, out and out back room bribes. Far from the truth. As cynical as it sounds, it's more like gaming, creating power points in a war-chest. This is, unfortunately, thanks to everyone from FDR to Bob Dole, how Washington has learned to work. And he quickly learned the levers.
Obama donated nearly 600K during his first two years, a time that he was gaining committee appointments and passing some significant legislation. This money comes from campaigns and campaigning. If you look at his records he is remarkably clean when it comes to corporate or special interest PACs.
In context, McCain donated nearly 400K in that 2006 time period. Clinton's PAC mysteriously disappears in February 2006, with a transfer of 10 million from HILLPAC to Friends of Hillary Clinton, so leading up to her Senate race she could immediately kick into her presidential bid. There is no traceable leadership PAC for her after this period. So nothing on the books from that point forward.
This is how she stays frozen at the 299K level. However, it's hard to believe she made no donations to anyone running in 2006 after that point, seemingly bad politics, especially as you're gearing up for a presidential bid. Not to mention Clinton had donated nearly 900K in her first two years, in kind, seeking favor and appointments.
To drop this tidbit in and not mention any of this, the system, how it works, the necessity of it if you want to get anything substantial done, and the likelyhood that none of those donations, and most likely not even the 300K he added last year, really had anything to do with the current Superdelegate battle is a grave oversight by anyone passing this around. And it is ultimately bad blogging.
sources:
www.opensecrets.org
the original article that started all this buying Super Delegates talk:
http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=336
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