I’m shaking my head, and trying not to waste perfectly good rage over this by howling and breaking things.
Michael Luo has been writing about Obama’s campaign donations, from the beginning. Mr Huo and I even had an email exchange over Obama’s reporting. I sent my concerns about donor counts in June, 2008. So I wonder why we had to wait for the NYT to give us the truth after the election is over? If I can find this stuff over at the FEC, why can’t they?
November 24, 2008, 1:34 pm
Study: Many Obama Small Donors Really Weren’t
By Michael Luo
[A new analysis of President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign fund-raising punctures one of the most enduring pieces of conventional wisdom from his presidential run — that small donors powered his record-breaking money machine….]
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/study-obamas-small-donors-really-werent/
Here is the cited report:
CFI Analysis of Presidential Candidates’ Donor Reports
REALITY CHECK: Obama Received About the Same Percentage from Small Donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004
Obama also raised 80% more from large donors than small, outstripping all rivals and predecessors
[…None of these findings denies the importance of either Obama’s appeal to repeat donors or his innovative use of online social networking tools to interweave appeals for contributions and critically important campaign volunteers. In particular, Obama did attract repeaters who have not been part of the traditional large-dollar, reception-attending fundraising crowd. The fact is that Obama’s financial juggernaut broke records at all contribution levels. The reality does not match the myth, but the reality itself was impressive….]
Blah, Blah. While I applaud that someone formalized this in a report, the timing sucks. None of it addresses the truth in advertising issue. Obama and Axelrod get big fat zeros for perpetuating the LIE that they garnered millions of donors since during the election. They used it to skew attitudes about whether they, or Clinton had more support.
It was DONATIONS!!!
People made serial donations of money, just like I did for Clinton. That doesn’t mean you get to count them, or me, as multiple small donors.
Seriously, why isn’t this illegal? It was obvious throughout the campaign for anyone that went to the publicly available FEC website. Surely other campaigns knew. Why didn’t anyone say? I would have thought it would have been a talking point! I’m just one curmudgeon of a blogger. I can’t do this on my own!
For you information:
Obama’s individual contributions, meeting the aggregated itemization threshold of $200 or more, through Oct 15th 2008, were 578,468.
Those individual contributions amounted to $583,102,124. And he got another 58,450,000 from Authorized committees.
I Own My Vote, PUMA, The Denver Group, Just Say No Deal
Grab and Keel 
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