Obama Raised Over $500 Million Online During Campaign

Washington Post:

Barack Obama raised half a billion dollars online in his 21-month campaign for the White House, dramatically ushering in a new digital era in presidential fundraising.

In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama's online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[Sparty1]

I didn't mind sending my monthly donations. I even sent a final $30 the other day to get my 'Change Can Happen and Change Has Come' t-shirt. I'm glad to see that most Americans felt the same way about electing Sen. Obama. I think we made a great choice and I hope that his intelligence and calm demeanor will bring about a serious change in our great country.

Outside of mistakenly hitting The Button and obliterating the entire world, I think anything he does will be better than Bush. No one can mess up more than that guy.

[Dave01]

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Bush still has two months left. DON'T give him any ideas!

[LemonMeringue]

I've read he took a huge amount of money from financial institutions, which would explain his support of the bailout.

I hope we're getting the change we worked so hard for.

[canucklivinginUSA]

Where did you read this, on right wing blogs?

[IAB]

NO...from any news source all over the Net...not news...not surprising.

[CaliTLC]

Citation please.

[Carolab]

This is exactly why Obama owes it to us to pick cabinet members who represent REAL, progressive change.

[chuk98death]

And he is. Except you are vetting these people (i.e spending hours upon hrs going through the + an - for chosing a person) like he his you really don't know (except for what the media tells you) why anyone of these people would be good in the position he offers them.

[Carolab]

Yes, there should be much greater transparency.

[karela]

Psst, Three million of us donated to get him elected, but there are three hundred million Americans. If you were hoping to completely control every thought and decision he makes, you weren't being realistic. He's president to all the people. If he catered to the 1% of us who gave money, how would that be any different than the special interests we all hated where wealthy people supported campaigns and then demanded special treatment. Some of us are acting like fat cats as we run around yelling, "I gave you money and now you have to do what I want you to do." I donated, volunteered, and supported him because I'd researched him and genuinely believed he was our best chance of reclaiming our country. But I never thought that I owned him, that he had to make individual policy decisions according to my views because he owes me. That's the ugly old political way and we surely shouldn't be picking it up where they left off. I voted for him because I think he'll be a good president. Now, it's his job. If at the end of four years I don't think he's done a good job, even though I've stayed engaged and done my part to help when he asks for my help, then I'll vote for someone else. But he doesn't own me and I don't own him. How about if we choose not to become the thing that we've hated for so long?

[Carolab]

It's about the "will of all", and the people as a collective are a far greater force than the special interests that have held sway over our system of government. We each DO have the power--as represented in our individual representatives. That is the very basis of our democracy. They must be held accountable to us and the real revolution in this country is exactly about that.

[JulieSA]

It as an amazing achievement. However, Obama went back on his pledge to use the public campaign finance system, thus killing it.

And, his website disabled the default security settings for donations, so that anyone could give any amount, including illegal donations from foreigners.

I'm sure Obama would have well outraised McCain even without cheating, but the fact is that he cheated, and he spent about 4 times the amount per vote that McCain did. Not a pretty picture of the New Hopey Changey Politics we were promised.

[karela]

I think mayhaps you're trolling. If not, here's a clue. His website did keep track of how much people gave. I over did and got letters back---but it was several weeks. How long do you think it would take a few dozen people to check and respond to 6.5 million donations? It's taking Minnesota several weeks just to count that high on the ballots, let alone respond. The Obama campaign handled it very well. It just took a while because they got donations in numbers beyond their wildest dreams---and we got a president beyond what we might have hoped for until he came along!

[Carolab]

There is a difference. Internet transactions are digitized. Ballots are being counted by hand. A system of tracking should have been in place to make it quite easy to digest all the donations and categorize them as to from whom and from whence they came.

[IAB]

And, his website disabled the default security settings for donations, so that anyone could give any amount, including illegal donations from foreigners.

This still needs investigating, regardless of whether he was elected or not, and that funny money, which represents FAR MORE THAN ANYTHING YOU SILLY FOOLS GAVE, needs to be returned.
I gave my tithe to Obama, but I had NO illusions that he wasn't getting tons of money from questionable sources...­Unfortunat­ely, I discovered this sickening finding AFTER the fact.

[Metome]

It still says a Billion on this page, but glad they fixed it on the main page. Now the Washington Post has to fix their article.

[ricitizen]

You're miss reading it. It says "A HALF billion." A 1/2 billion = 500 million or .5 billion.

[Dave01]

The JUST fixed it!

[Myshkin57]

And now a bunch of people will reply that everyone who commented on the mistake is mistaken. It's great how that happens here.

[Dave01]

LOL! True

[jeremyemilio]

Well, a billion IS the new million, I guess.

[jp5472]

Actually with our 2005 dollar being worth $.04 cents to the worth of a 1930 dollar, you could say it is.

[cdub1991]

Million...­billion...­whatever. Possibly of more significance was the events surrounding the Minnesota Bachman campaign. The ability to nationalize what are essentially local elections is both fascinating and disturbing. This has always been the case to some degree, but taking it out of the hands of the party machines and having ordinary citizens independently dumping a million dollars into a house race could change the game totally--and not necessarily for the better.

[JulieSA]

George Soros is helping fund Al Franken's recount. He held a big fundraiser in New York for that a couple of days ago.

[Carolab]

Franken was a key player in the decision to bump Dean and push Kerry ahead in 2004.

[canucklivinginUSA]

And the former owner of Home Depot is funding Norm Coleman and threatening retailers that they should be shot for not voting GOP.

[canucklivinginUSA]

Btw, Soros had signaled the alarm about the financial crisis. If only we had listen to him

[Carolab]

Republicans don't give that kind of money on their own to candidates. They're tightwads.

[Carolab]

And a lot of them are broke.

[Rog49Thomas]

Well, I accept his statement that he wasn't born in a manager.

But $500 billion?

Looks like our economic problems are solved.

A twenty-four telethon for America.

Even after fixing the economy, there'll be money left over for another needless war or tax cuts for the already too rich.

[Metome]

The title is wrong in the original Washington Post article. It needs to be corrected both on the Washington Post and here at HuffPo.

[GhostNyc]

First time a typo made me almost crap my pants.

$500 MILLION folks ....M I L L I O N

(imagine if it was 500 Billion, Obama almost could have financed the entire bailout- LOL )

[Dave01]

I hear ya! I was thinking the same thing! LMAO!!!!!

[karela]

I wish it was $500 billion. He wouldn't have to ask congress for $150 billion over ten years to get going on clean energy. He could just create five million jobs this week and go energy independent next year. And then think what to do with the other $350 billion. What a fun thought game to play!

[Myshkin57]

Proofreader on vacation? It's $500 MILLION, not billion.

[Texas4Obama]

Hahahaha!
The photo of Obama smiling under the "BILLION" mistake on the Politics page is priceless !

HuffPost - even Obama is laughing at the typo! Please fix your typo!

[IntExec]

It was 7 trillion pesos....p­lease, get it right!

[Dave01]

LOL

[Cheryllou]

Wow! 500 billion? I don't think so.