Signs of Bush Tactics & Hypocrisy in Another Obama Campaign Email
By Deb Cupples on April 15, 2008 at 4:44 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Democrats, Fund Raising, Hillary Clinton, Lobbyists, PACs & Lobbying Groups
Originally posted at the Buck Naked Politics blog.
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In March, I objected to a fund-raising email (signed by Barack Obama), which claimed that Hillary Clinton was attacking Obama’s supporters. The implication: she’s coming after you, personally, the way Darth Vader went after Luke. Fostering a bellicose, with-us-or-against-us mentality worked for President Bush after 9/11, and Obama’s use of that tactic is as factually questionable as it is divisive.
Yesterday, I found another Obama campaign email (signed by David Plouffe), a double whammy that includes: 1) a similar line about Hillary’s so-called "attacks" on Obama’s supporters; and 2) the oft-repeated — and highly hypocritical — message that Hillary and McCain have taken special-interest money, while Obama hasn’t. In part, the email states:
"We’ve built the broadest campaign of ordinary people in the history of presidential politics — and more people across this country have voted for Barack Obama than either one of them.
"And we’ve done it the right way: our campaign is funded by everyday people giving $5 or more. That’s distinctly different from Senator McCain and Senator Clinton, who both rely on money from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs….
“The attacks from the Clinton campaign — on Barack Obama himself, and on supporters like you — can be expected to increase as her chances of winning dwindle further.
"A few weeks ago, one of her top aides tried to diminish our success by referring to the places we’ve won as "boutique" states and to our supporters as the "latte-sipping crowd."
First, Barack Obama certainly has taken special-interest-connected money, just as Hillary and McCain have. Yesterday, my co-blogger Damozel covered this very issue:
"State lobbyists and non-wage-earning spouses of lobbyists and lobbying firm employees have contributed $115,163 to Obama’s campaign through March 20, according to the center [for Responsive Politics].…
"People in the oil and gas industries have given $222,309 to Obama. He received $528,765 from the pharmaceutical and health industry, making him the largest recipient of the sector’s largesse." (Newhouse News Service citing Center for Responsive Politics)
Technically, Obama wasn’t lying: he didn’t take money directly from corporations, but neither did Hillary or McCain — because that’s illegal (see Tillman Act of 1907). Instead, candidates take money from corporate executives, employees, and PACs (which tend to be comprised of corporate employees).
Taking money from the spouses of lobbyists and corporate players is an old trick that people have used to get around donation limits. Obama seems to have used the spouses so he could take money from lobbyists without having to list lobbyists as the direct donors.
That’s smells like a bamboozling.
Furthermore, as Sourcewatch points out, Obama "used campaign donations generated by PACS and Lobbyists to bankroll the birth of his White House bid"; the donations totaled about $1 million (citing Chicago Sun-Times).
In other words, Obama was for taking lobbyist/PAC money before he was against it. If you want more details, The Hill covered Obama’s under-the-table ties to lobbyists last year — issues of which many other media outlets still seem unaware.
About the alleged "attacks": the phrase "latte-sipping crowd" is a way of saying people who can afford to pay $5 for a cup of coffee. Since when is it an insult — in this of all nations — to be referred to as having money?
That and Hillary Clinton did not claim that the states Obama won don’t count. She just recognized that the ones who had small caucuses may not be as representative of the greater population as the states that had primaries with large voter turn out.
Fact: caucuses often include far fewer voters than primaries (usually voters who are politically active and have accommodating schedules). Compare these few primary and caucus states for example:
| Delegates | #Voters | |
| Wyoming (caucus) | 12 | 8,753 |
| Georgia (primary) | 12 | 1,046,485 |
| Hawaii (caucus) | 17 | 37,247 |
| Rhode Island | 18 | 184,904 |
| Iowa (caucus) | 45 | 2,501 |
| Oklahoma (primary) | 38 | 401,230 |
Less than 50,000 people voted in caucuses to decide who got Wyoming’s, Hawaii’s and Rhode Island’s combined 74 delegates.
More than 1.6 million people voted in primaries to give out Georgia’s, Rhode Island’s and Oklahoma’s combined 68 delegates.
The term "boutique states" certainly is not an insult or attack on the caucus states that Obama won. It’s a very pleasant way of pointing out the obvious: far fewer voters participated in most caucus states than in most primary states.
In short, Hillary Clinton has not attacked Obama’s supporters — and yet, Obama (or his campaign staff) seem obsessed with convincing their supporters that Hillary has attacked them.
Trying to make Hillary out to be a personal enemy of Obama’s supporters is not the way to promote the party unity. It’s also hypocritical, coming from a candidate who has billed himself as a "unifier."
We’ve seen this tactic before. With help from Mr. Rove and Mr. Limbaugh, President Bush managed to get many Americans getting riled — as though criticizing Bush equated to calling his supporters’ mamas ugly.
If Sen. Obama continues to craft images and make statements that clash with his actions, how will voters ever know who he really is? I’ll be happy to foward the Plouffe email to anyone who emails me.
Related BN-Politics Posts:
* Technically, Obama Didn’t Fib re: Campaign Donations
* The Audacity of … Hypocrisy?
* Obama Took Oil Money but Said He Didn’t
* Obama Took Credit for Others’ Legislative Work, Media Ignored it
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