Obama Sings the Money Blues and Blames Hillary
By Larry Johnson on July 11, 2008 at 9:46 PM in Current Affairs
By this point we cannot be surprised by the audacity or hubris of Mr. Bamboozle, Barack Obama. Today’s Washington Post had this tidbit:
The fundraising machine Sen. Barack Obama is relying on to overwhelm Sen. John McCain this fall has shown signs of wear in recent weeks, as Internet contributions have slowed and efforts to recruit top donors to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign have been beset by lingering tensions.
Apparently no one told Mr. “I Went to Harvard Cuz I Am So Smart” that the next phase of fundraising for the Presidential campaign would depend on attracting Hillary supporters and disaffected Republicans. Why?Under our campaign finance laws a person can only give $4600 to a candidate. Once you reach that limit you cannot give more to that person.
What do you do after you have tapped out your own true believers? Who is left? I count at least four categories of potential donors–Hillary supporters, those who wanted other democrats besides Hillary and Obama, uncommitted independents, and disaffected Republicans. It stands to reason then that Obama must reach out to these folks. He needs to make nice. So what is he doing?
Not too good. He fell far short of his fundraising goals for the second quarter. He’s down according to some sources by more than 70%. So who is responsible for this brewing debacle? Hillary of course. Obama and his posse are blaiming Hillary for his fundraising woes and–surprise, surprise–scapegoating Hillary for his own failings. The man is a putz.
While Obama trails John McCain’s fundraising he has found a scapegoat in Hillary. His campaign excuse that he can’t raise money because he is helping pay off her debt is either just one more Obama tall tale, an alibi for his own shortcoming, or exposes an astonishing lack of knowledge about simple campaign finance.
What’s the true story? Obama dropped out of the presidential campaign financing system in the belief that he could outraise and outspend McCain after making campaign finance one of the key planks of his campaign during the primaries, the crucial evidence of his integrity on reform. Well, never mind.
Having slipped away from his promise, Obama skirted away from other promises–that he would filibuster Bush’s FISA bill, instead voting for it, or that he would be a champion of choice for women, now cowardly taking a macho stand against imaginary frivolous and flighty women who he says claim to be just “feeling blue” when they have late-term abortions.
Unsurprisingly, Obama’s naive supporters, gulled into thinking that the One was the second coming, slowly, ever so slowly, ever so slightly, opened their shut eyes a sliver and saw a Chicago politician, and a crude one at that, who has played them like an accordion. So the money gusher has slowed.
And how is that outreach to Hillary supporters going? We reported last week on this blog that Obama bombed in his first effort to woo Hillary money people (see Obama Bombs). Turns out that wretch of a journalist, Bob Novak, stumbled belatedly on the same facts. In his column yesterday Novak “reported:”
“I would say he was pretty underwhelming,” a longtime Democratic activist said several days after he and some 200 other big-money supporters of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign met with the victor, Barack Obama, in Washington on June 26. Gus will support and contribute to Obama as the party’s nominee, but he is not enthusiastic about it.
He is not alone. After the closed-door session in the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel’s ballroom, Gus was among 20 participants who gathered for drinks to talk it over. They agreed that it was not an “exciting performance” by the candidate who has entranced monster rallies across the country. Obama was “low-key” in a perfunctory appeal to them.
Who does Obama blame? Hillary, of course. While promising to clear up her debt as a token of his good faith in unifying the party–who can forget that Obama campaigned as Mr. Unity?–Obama has done little on that score. Here’s the rub: Contributing to Hillary has no relationship–zero, zilch, nada, nil, nothing–to do with Obama’s fundraising. An Obama contributor who has maxed out to Obama can give the maximum amount to Hillary without any conflict. There is no strain, especially for big contributors. But Obama hasn’t fulfilled his part of the deal, while Hillary this week raised $4.1 million from her contributors for him in New York. Obama took the stage and forgot, just one of those Freudian slips, to ask for money for Hillary–until he left the stage and the press reminded he had not done what he had come to do.
Then, the Obama campaign has leaked to the press that it’s all Hillary’s greedy fault that he is falling short on his fundraising targets. But it’s really Obama’s shiftiness and broken promises that are the root of his problem. Mr. Bamboozle keeps doing the okie doke but he is going broke. Instead of rolling in dough he is wallowing in woe. Way to go Mr. Unity.
UPDATE: Here is Will Bowers on Fox. Disturbing video of the “Brilliant” Barack Obama forgetting to ask for money for Hillary.
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