i'm sure as most of you know, clinton and obama raised $51 million in 3 months time between the two of them. that is a staggering amount, and telling of the state of the current political donors. but rather than focus on who's out raising who, i'd like to know your thoughts regarding the amounts. this easily eliminates any of those "2nd tier" candidates, not to mention any hope of an unknown independent trying to compete. while i'm not totally sold on publicly funded campaigns, it's hard not to argue for them when looking upon numbers like this. the amounts raised can be found here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/04-07/0405campaignmoney.pdf
Any country with publicly-funded campaigns will effectively become an oligarchy, because the people in power decide who gets the money. (Not that it doesn't happen now, but having it written into law makes it worse.)
and Mitt Rommney is the top republican? Could it be wealthy members of the Mormon Church? It is a sad state when our next president has to cater to the very wealthy in order to raise funds to get elected.
i was thinking about this earlier. I suppose a party could raise their money and for the 1st 'tier' of candidates have an equal distribution of funds. As candidates start to be eliminated then the amounts would increase.
Except in our mostly privately funded system it becomes an ogliarchy too since its the people witht he money who decide who gets the power. I personally am skeptical of campaign financing laws that limit how much money can be given but I can see how it is a problem. I do believe that the amount of money necessary to run a successful campaign and the role it plays in weeding out candidates is a serious disservice to our democracy. If we had the type of campaigns that we have now in 1959 its unlikely Kennedy would've won the Democratic nomination as he wasn't one of the early favorites. The money and the compressed campaign schedule also deprives many states from being exposed to the candidates or have the candidates be exposed to them. There is no reason to campaign in a state that doesn't have an early, and large primary or big money donors. Solutions though aren't that easy and I'm not sure there are easy solutions to the big money elections that don't cause more problems.
The Mormons are backing Romney like he's a rockstar. The wealthy ones (specifically the Huntsmans) are giving, but it's more that every Mormon that can give something gives something. He has sold out huge fundraising dinners (lower-priced than those given by the Bushes and Clintons) in Idaho. Do you know how rare it is for a Presidential candidate to even acknowledge that Idaho exists, much less make an appearance?
50,000 of Obama's 100,000 donations came from online. Out of those 50,000 90% of the donations were $100 or less. Raising almost 7 0f his 25 mil online. that's impressive
Oh, it's definitely not perfect. But there are two ways to get a lot of money: 1. Have a few people give you a lot of money. 2. Have a lot of people give you a little money. As long as we have a privately-funded system, someone like Howard Dean can get grassroots support and build a massive campaign even though his views are far from the elite. I haven't looked, but I would guess that Obama's fundraising is much like the second choice (although he is popular in Hollywood).
BTW the 7 mil online was almost as much as Gore raised (8.6mil, which was the record for the time) for the entire first quarter of 2000.
My skepticism of him being just a flash in the pan is over. It's clear he will be around a long while, maybe to the bitter end. The biggest surprise to me was the GOP side, where McCain's very poor 3rd place makes me think he could be done for and Romney's 1st place blew me away.
You have to understand that the Republican base is not vocal. They do not control the press and they are not running around the internet making noise, like the libs. The Republican base identifies the most on core values with Romney. Because they are far less visible than the left-leaning Dems, people (especially around here), are always incredulous that everyone doesn't agree with the libs. It's typical libpig arrogance and ignorance. "What? You don't agree with me? Just look around the D&D! Everyone agrees with me! You must be stupid!" It's Batman Jones-style logic.
Campaign "donations" (keep in mind that, in most cases, "donation" is a euphemism for bribe - when big companies/firms donate, they're buying influence - they're not "donating" anything) are one of the biggest factors rendering democracy ineffective. The influence a citizen is supposed to have over government is supposed to be the same across the board - one vote. That's it. Barring the ostentatious 'grassroots' donations (which are often bundled donations from organized groups), a donation of huge sum of money allows a person/company a level of access to a candidate that the average citizen can't afford, and access offers opportunities for influence. All campaign "donations" should be made illegal. And this amount of money is just ridiculous and disgusting. Imagine what a community could do with that kind of cash.
Idaho is almost 1/3 Mormon so it doesn't suprise me that he would go to Idaho where he can raise so much money there. But other than a Mormon candidate, I don't see anyone else being able to raise a whole lot of money in Idaho so it's not surprising that a non-Mormon (i.e. almost all previous presidential candidates) wouldn't bother.
Which independant candidate out there do you think would shoot to the top tier if they had clinton or obama money? I think money is overrated in politics. More important is access to media and likeability.
The biggest story here, in my opinion, is that for the first time in what is probably decades, the Democratic candidates for President are many millions of dollars ahead of the GOP candidates, at this stage of the election cycle. It's quite remarkable, and another indication of the decline of the Republican Party. D&D. Groovy!
