A top Clinton fundraiser took a jab at the rival. Obama “doesn’t have the sustainability and doesn’t have the ability to raise what the Clintons are able to raise,” said John Catsimatidis. “Regardless of what he reports, at the end of the day, the Clintons get the nomination.”
Here’s why they’re doing it: the Clinton donors who got railroaded into Hillary’s with-us-or-against-us warning now realize that they’ve made a terrible mistake. Clinton’s people told them that they would blow the field away and that she would be the inevitable nominee.
Problem is, they were wrong.
Now, Clinton’s people need to keep the lid on the container. So, go after Obama, say he can’t win, keep your donors in line. If you don’t, donors will give to Obama and leak it to the press so they can get on Obama’s good side.
This is what fear looks like, when you pick the wrong horse. Whether you own the horse, or merely placed a bet.
Ask any campaign guy/gal who has multiple races/cycles under their belt and they’ll tell you that most candidates suck.
They don’t work hard, they meddle too much, they say dumb things on camera or they’re just insane. The real fun is the shadow groups — the 527s and 501(c)3s.
Here’s why:
Why is Americans United for Change is running TV ads against the Senate Minority leader in Kentucky? There’s no way in hell Mitch loses; he’s one of the smartest elected GOP political minds and he can easily raise money. But, that ’s not the point. Campaigning has grown into something completely different than winning and losing single elections: It’s now almost sport.
Back in 2002 a group of rich Democrats and consultants got together and said to themselves, “we want influence.” They created this 527, originally, to protect Social Security from the Republicans’ “privatization.” Now, they still have this 527 and still continue to have influence with their money and with their consultants. Somebody just stood up one day and said, “Let’s rip Mitch’s face off!” for probably no reason except that they can.
And that’s the beauty of this for people like me. No candidate, no pressure to win the race, no worry about the candidate’s wife or best friend telling me how to do my job, no grueling travel days and no limiting contact with pesky reporters. Just a bunch of paid professionals sitting around a table making a couple of rich dudes happy.
Multiple congressional investigations have uncovered evidence that White House appointees regularly communicate using email accounts provided by the Republican Party. …
Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued letters to the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney ‘04 Campaign directing them to preserve all emails by and for White House officials, and to meet with the committee about the legal issues involved in conducting official government business using partisan email accounts.
They will get those emails. The National Journal article (which the above-quoted blog post is based on) says it’s an untested question, but courts have long agreed that Congress must be able to investigate in order to exercise its legislative function. The only people that tend to get away from Congress’ reach are constitutionally-protected branches of government: SCOTUS, White House, the states, or protections built into the Bill of Rights (i.e. attorney-client privilege).
So RNC people, better start purging. It’s infinitely better for someone go to jail for a few years on a charge of obstruction of justice than whatever they may find in those messages. Somebody will take care of you and your family when you get out.
Let this be two important lessons to all you burgeoning politicos: Check politics at the door when you govern, and never, ever write something in an email you don’t want the whole world to see.
You think you might have your cell phone turned off while you’re on the floor of the House of Representatives debating the war in Iraq. Or not:
Listen during the silence. Apparently, the House Chamber is actually a movie theater, and at least one member of Congress is that one guy. And that guy is a jerk. (Via Atrios.)
And don’t miss the chyron about midway through the video:
Please run a campaign for just one cycle. You’ll learn so much and and you’ll be better at your job. Case in point, Chris Cillizza’s “Battling for Netroots Support” post today:
On Act Blue, one of the premier online bundlers of contributions to Democratic candidates, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) is far and away the first choice. He has received more than 8,000 contributions totaling $900,000. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (N.M.) has taken in $287,000, while a draft effort for Sen. Barack Obama (lll.) contributed $17,0000. (Obama entered the race later than some of his competitors, which may explain the relatively low amount of cash he collected.) It’s also worth nothing that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had received a single contribution for $1 at the end of January. Since then $40 more dollars have come in.
Chris, did you ask John Edwards if that was his campaign’s primary software vendor for raising money online? If he has super lawyers contributing $4,600 dollars per couple, I hardly think the blogosphere considers that “netroots.” If you click through to his page you see his campaign is the big chunk of that $851,249.96.
Now, for the naysayers out there, I agree 100% that Edwards is a netroots candidate with lots of support from that constituency — more so than the other Democrats in the field. But if that $850K is all in $50 dollar chunks, I’ll be the first to strike this entire post and replace it with “I’m an idiot.” You cannot use an ActBlue total without breakdowns as a proof point of netroots financial support.
People who run campaigns know that ActBlue has morphed from a tool used by the netroots to bundle money into legitimate vendor software for campaigns to manage their online contributions, e.g. NGP or Aristotle.
Just one cycle, that’s all I ask. You might even enjoy yourself.
Anyone even remotely connected to politics knows that Dennis Kucinich is a joke. And when you’re a joke, nobody attacks you because it’s not worth their time.
But in this day and age, it’s just too easy to create multimedia, and Jeff Jarvis shows how easy it is to demonstrate that Kucinich is a nut:
This is why people are careful about how they appear and what they say. When you’re normal, this sort of thing doesn’t stick. But when you’re nuts, it works like a charm.
If all politics is local, then all the fun politics is in local elections. Off year contests and early primaries are the best places to find these little tidbits. The big mayoral races, the statewide races in Kentucky, Louisianna, New Jersey and Virginia and many, many other local contests where the real shenanigans still take place.
These are the places where electoral legends are formed. One of my favorites is former Newark, NJ mayor Sharpe James actually having the City of Newark Police tear down Corey Booker’s billboards in the 2002 Newark Mayor’s race.
So, tonight I hear from a friend in Chicago — February 27th Election — who is sitting there waiting to see something from his opponent’s campaign.
George W. Dunne Campaign Fund
201 East Chestnut Apartment 20C Chicago, IL 60611
$10,000.00
2/15/2007
Richard M Daley Campaign Comm (2A)
George Dunne was the longtime president of the Cook County Board and Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. He passed away in May of 2006.
A friend writes,
Only in Chicago can dead people vote and dead politicians still give money.
George Dunne ia probably smiling in his grave right now.
Update, Thursday: The Chicago Tribune’s Clout Street blog is on the case:
[O]ther beneficiaries of [Dunne's fund] have included Todd Stroger’s successful bid for Cook County Board president ($5,000); losing Democratic congressional candidates Dan Seals and Tammy Duckworth ($1,000 each); the International Ministry in Chicago ($10,000); and the University of St. Mary’s of the Lake in Mundelein ($3,000).
Thanks to the Internet, and with the explosion of blogging especially, all of a sudden we political types have an easier time spreading around our dirt. In the past, we used to have to play by the rules of the old media: space limitations, kissing reporter’s butts and packaging the story just right.
Now, and especially for big campaigns, all you have to do is leak it to a blogger, or in this case, The Smoking Gun.
The fascinating thing to me is the reasoning behind the leaks. Before, you wanted to get something into a newspaper or TV so you could cite it in your advertisement as a legitimate news source. Now, they get it into the bloodstream early so reporters define candidates in their coverage.
Giving it to TSG wasn’t exactly the best way to write a narrative, but the blogs will take it from there. My guess is that now, for a cycle or two at least, the “Rudy is damaged goods” story goes up a notch.
WWB Update, Feb. 17: Guess not. The Edwards blogger fiasco was the online story this week. Meanwhile, not too much on Giuliani’s second cousin wedding/annullment (FDR and Eleanor were distant cousins, right?). And one could argue Romney has it the worst.
The WSJ [subscription required] pegs the number at $30 million for Hillary Clinton’s first quarter fundraising.
The strategy in the expectations game is always to lowball your own figures and highball everybody else’s. Howard Wolfson set Edwards at $20 million and Obama at $40 million, so they figure neither will hit that goal and HRC will easily surpass her opponents.
But openly admitting to $30 million is a big sign for the insiders. That would be one third of the so-called opening bar price of $100 million that the media expect of a presidential campaign.
Compare that to the Casey-Santorum Pennsylvania Senate race, which was one of the longest, most expensive races of 2006. Their combined spending topped out atabout $41 million.
HRC’s people are nothing if not calculating and goal-driven. I’ll bet you they are shooting higher than one-third. My guess? Hillary gets within $4 million of that — and I’m not sure I would limit it to $4 million under.
