Obama: The Billion Dollar Man

Nearly two years ago, Barack Obama muscled his way into the top tier of presidential contenders by breaking fundraising records.

When the 2008 campaign books are closed, the Democratic president-elect will shatter another record by coming close to, or capturing, the title of the first billion-dollar candidate.

That's roughly how much the Obama finance team will have raised for his campaign, convention, transition and Jan. 20 Inauguration events.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[mom2sons]

What's funny is that the same way that Nixon duped the rethugs, so did Karl Rove. The strategy stayed in place all these years, and what did the rethugs and conservatives really get out of it. The big money people got richer and the neocons destroyed this country. Abortion is still legal. The evangelical pastors got rich, but what did the followers really get? NOTHING. I've come to the conclusion, is that they like being duped. Go ahead and put up Sinner Sarah for 2012.

I hope Obama cleans house from top to bottom and replaces them with people who are loyal to this country. I estimate that I gave about $250, money well spent and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Now is the time for real and lasting change. Thanks everybody for all of your efforts! Can't wait to attend one of the balls and to celebrate our historic win! GO TEAM!

[kotexbarbie]

Big money runs this country. The best we can do is make sure the big money people get rich less disproportionately to the population at large. Even under the prosperous Clinton years, the wealthy got wealthier -- but the rest of us did better too. And the gap was not so noxious as today.

You're right about the Republican "southern strategy" that started with Nixon and came into it's own with Reagan. The point was ALWAYS to feed the rich and assert military power (which is one of the main ways the rich get richer). The religious and cultural conservatives got nothing but bragging rights and a few Supreme Court justices. They don't like being duped, but they like being aggrieved victims. It's part of their identity.

Your $250 donation is precisely how democracy is supposed to work. It would be even better if your $250 went into a taxpayer fund that was the ONLY source of money for all candidates -- with strict guidance and oversight on how they could spend it.

But $250 donations from even millions of people didn't get Obama to a BILLION dollars.

[Blue in NH]

This just shows how desparate the thinking part of the American public wanted to put an end to Reagan/Bushism. It was money very well spent!

[fredjernig]

I started out as a small online credit card Obama donor and over time gave $875 to his campaign. I'm a little guy, and that's a lot of money for me. I'm always in the red, and this didn't help. However I felt it was the least I could do (in addition to voter registration volunteering) to invest in the future of the world. I felt I could not afford to do otherwise and run a chance of having the Republicans continue to ruin the country. A couple of McCain-Palin remarks made me rush to my computer to give as much as I could.

So I guess that makes me an unverified not-really small donor. So dig, dig, and all you'll find is hundreds of thousands like me. Still paying off our credit card, but with a BIG BIG SMILE. The republicans have asked us to swallow so many real scandals and now we're supposed to worry about this... What about the 10 billion dollar a month useless war in Iraq, a..h.les? Doesn't that worry you? (oops, sorry, more like 15 bn a month). Republican friends, you have set the bar so high for scandals nobody is supposed to care about, and now you're fiddling with chickensh.t because there's nothing real against Obama. But relax, and admit he's not scaring you anymore, and the country will be a better place. And perhaps you'll have a great candidate in 2016...

[biglover]

I did the same thing. I donated $1000 to Obama over an 11-month period and it was hard for me too. I stopped buying lunch and bringing my lunch and I saved $40 a week which allowed me to give.

He is worth every penny and in the meantime, I love bringing my own lunch and now I am saving that $160 a month.

Win, win situation

[kotexbarbie]

Both your stories are great. And btw, I've been bringing my own lunch for years. But just because Obama won, you're buying into the Republican philosophy that dollars equals votes and money is free speech. Obama rejecting public financing and spending one billion dollars to run for president is not a scandal. It's not illegal. It's just another erosion along the slippery slope of money in politics. Not as immediately apparent as the constitutional erosion under Bush, but no less dangerous in the end.

[Kartoffel]

We can't "dig, dig" because Obama won't disclose his sub-$200 donor list. We couldn't even investigate YOUR contribution if you had thought to use fake names, which would have worked since Obama had the anti-fraud safeguards disabled. You could have split your $875 into 5 amounts under $200 and donated under the names "Frank Sinatra", "Sammy Davis", "Dean Martin", "Peter Lawford", and "David Hasselhof", all with the same credit card number. No one would have been the wiser.

[ReportThis]

Now if someone would please do a follow-up piece regarding how much Hillary Clinton went into debt in her failed campaign. hahahahaha

[clearmindedman]

The primary issue remains, many of the small donations were not traceable and Obama refused to disclose their sources. Some were traced to questionable and fraudulent sources.

This may be researched alright, but it could be determined that a large portion of these contributions were illegal. And when the election was done, Obama did not give the unused funds back, he paid off his friends, which, if not outright illegal, was a questionable use of the funds.

http://myrealityteleviSion.com/2008/11/questionable-sources-of-obamas-campaign-contributions/

[SabrinaFair]

Oh be quiet already! At some point, you have to realize that this sounds like crazy rhetoric. And quite frankly, at the base of this rhetoric is anger and displeasure of having a black man as president.

That's the only reason this kind of rhetoric continues.

[fredjernig]

It's not only that he's black. It's their failure to steal the election again that gets them. Would be the same for any Democrat.

[Keith52]

But absolutely zero Republican donations were questionable or illegal, right?

Please, you lost. You lost by a huge margin. 53%. That means the Independent, Republican and write ins combined did not beat Barack's support from Americans.

Now sit back and enjoy the fruits of OUR labors. We have been suffering through yours for too long.

[blaqntelligence]

"Now sit back and enjoy the fruits of OUR labors. We have been suffering through yours for too long."

Perfect.

[Kartoffel]

Yes, the small donations were untraceable because Obama had the Address Verification System disabled on his website. The potential for credit card fraud is enormous. The RNC filed a complaint with the FEC a month ago. If a sympathetic judge orders the sub-$200 donor list be offered up for examination this will blow up into a HUGE scandal. It amazes me that the MSM has given this issue so little scrutiny. If John McCain or even Hillary Clinton has disabled basic anti-credit card fraud safeguards on their websites you can rest assured we all would have heard plenty about it in the MSM.

[anewworld]

Can't we just all get along...................................smile

[BobsNotWorking]

The primary issue remains, THE REPUBLICANS ARE GONE!

[ITSDEE]

.... and Thank GOD, and all of us who gave to the President-Elect Obama's campaign, for that! Good Riddance Repugnicans!

[Duey Moore]

I think the best thing of all is he knows how to pronounce Nuclear!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOWlpvOPKXc

[dak242628]

talk about buying the presidency. that was expensive

[Wanjiru]

...OMG!...

...is this man handsome?...is he handsome?...OR is he handsome??...

*gasp*

.

[kotexbarbie]

Is that you Chris Matthews ?

[saron123]

HA!

[Fongenie]

Time for you to change that kotex.

[Joyful Woman]

Barack Obama is "fine as dirt" now say it with a little soul and you just might master an old saying from the hood.

Say it like you mean it. Fine as dirt. It doesn't sound like much, but it really means "they don't come no finer than this."

He is a sharp brother.

[biglover]

And he's fine, fine fine fine and worth every bit of the billion dollars. I think we got a bargain and I would have paid at least 2 Billion.

[GAPeach99]

The word is "foine"!

[kotexbarbie]

Obama has broken the public finance system by becoming the first candidate in modern history to reject it. What candidate in their right mind would now ever take public financing? This has become the equivalent of a nuclear arms race. Where are we going with this?

A billion dollars for one man to run for president? I don't see this as a positive article.

[Bullwinkie]

What candidate in their right mind would now ever take public financing?

anyone who can't raise that kind of money.

Actually I think this is absurd myself, but if the only way to get our government back is to buy it, so be it.
bush has proven it is far more expensive to let it go to the republican bidder.

[rowzeer]

The Repubicans put the government up for sale so we just bought it back

[hortonhearsawho]

republicans have proven to nuclear...

[biglover]

you mean nuke you ler don't you

[westminster]

"What candidate in their right mind would ever take public financing?" Those who can't raise money. Does John McCain ring a bell? Does Hillary Clinton ring a bell?

[kotexbarbie]

No one could have expected that a so-called progressive candidate would be the one to opt for private sources of money, free from the extra scrutiny that public financing was designed to impose. The ability to raise money is not the issue. The Clintons, with their connections, have quite a powerful fund-raising machine. McCain and Clinton took public financing because EVERY SINGLE CANDIDATE since Nixon has taken public financing. Public financing was created to curb the corruption and abuses that become available through private financing of elections.

What's old is new again.

[duze]

If they couda, they wouda.

[jeanrenoir]

Obama showed the way for shoving the lobbyists out of the way with his revolution in fund-raising. It obviously TOOK every cent he could raise to crush the Republican slime machine, and the Clinton smear campaign before that. Now Obama has an independence from pressure from lobbyists that NO president has had in modern history, including presidents like FDR who were slaves to labor because of its financial as well as boots-on-the-ground support. Obama is uniquely his own man. The muscle of his potential superstar popularity makes the "Hollywood" appeal of Reagan, who used it to the hilt, look like nothing. The Republicans, Fox, and Rush has all better be afraid, be very afraid. They've controlled the masses up till now. Now they have to face a juggernaut of popularity such as they've never seen in their lives. Obama makes Bill Clinton look like Dennis Kucinich.

[kotexbarbie]

Here are some of Obama's fundraising sources from last July, before the general campaign even really got going:

Donor: Goldman Sachs & Co.
How Much: $627,730

Donor: JP Morgan
How Much: $398,021

Donor: Citigroup
How Much: $393,899

Donor: UBS AG
How Much: $378,400

Donor: Lehman Brothers
How Much: $353,922

You can read up on it here: http://theprolific.com/2008/08/meet-obamas-corporate-backers/

OpenSecrets.org: "Investment bank UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are among Obama's list of top donors ."

Wall Street Journal: "Senator Barack Obama was the largest single recipient of Fannie Mae campaign contributions, more than any other poltician over the last 20 years except for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd. More amazing still, Mr. Obama pulled off this feat even though he had only been in the Senate for four of those 20 years"

This is the kind of %#@! that goes on when campaigning for president costs millions (now BILLIONS) of dollars, and you turn to private sources of financing.

Obama received a lot of money from small donors over the internet. But don't be naive. He also received at least half his money in large wet kisses straight from the corporate mouth.

[hortonhearsawho]

2012, RNC spends 4 billion on Palin wardrobe.

[realtalkingnow]

I have no problem with this because that money went to job creations, for thousands of small businesses all across this country: small businesses across this country, who in turn were hiring people at printing companies, which were printing campaign signs, and buttons, and campaign fliers, and t-shirts. Money which went to hire people to work at campaign offices all over the country, who were tasked with getting the fliers , and the campaign signs out to the community, and to walk door to door, signing up new voters, and at campaign offices, fielding, and making phone calls explaining, and answering questions about Obama's policies. The money was put to use paying for t.v, and radio ads, which Obama needed to get the democratic message out, as well as to respond, and set the record straight to the disgusting attacks that McCain, and Palin were constantly putting out, and the attacks they: McCain, and Palin were leveling at Obama on the campaign trail at their hate rallies.
Not to mention the many swiftboating t.v ads that were being put out by other conservative 527's.

So far in almost every state, Obama has donate the computers used at their campaign offices to local schools. I think that's wonderful!

So the money donated has gone to great use creating jobs for many Americans, who were probably unemployed prior to the election, and were able to find work at a printing company, or working at a campaign office, etc ......

[grizhead63]

If he needs $2 Billion next time we'll do that too.

[hortonhearsawho]

I'll pitch in.

[sonomarc]

Yesssssssssssssss.....

[chronic]

Thats right

[heal57]

That's REAL public financing!!!!

[SPQR1052]

I am there sign me up in advance - I love this guy and am willing to give him a DO-OVER if he makes a mistake or two or three but I am convinced that he won't need re-do's!

The biggest part of his responsibility is restoring our convinence in our naio and each other. From the looks of things he's off to an excellent start. Now go purchase some durable goods and create a job or help a neighbor.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

[e-mail]
Amer- I CAN

SPQR "Senatus Populusque Romanus" The Senate The People (Romans)
________________________________________________________________________________________________

[FreedomAgain]

GoBama! Just shows the power of truth.

[Prakosh]

I am still reserving judgment. None of us yet knows how Obama will govern or how all these different voices will wind up meshing within his administration/cabinet. Unfortunately, the model which we have been overly propagandized with and no doubt Obama has to some degree also been infected with is that of the Lincoln administration based on the currently best-selling book by pop historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, "A Team of Rivals." But as some have noted this cabinet was, in spite of the mythology surrounding it, a failure with all the rivals gone by the end of Lincoln's first term. Whether Obama will prove more adept than Lincoln or less remains to be seen. I am a little depressed with the current obsession with Obama's every move; it remains to be seen how all of this will play out and I think it is still far too early to tell how the model will work in the hurly-burly of the 24 hour news cycle that is the reality of today's Washington. While I have no illusion's today, nor have I ever had, about a radically liberal Obama, I am still convinced that he will be better than Bush and certainly he will be far superior to the alternative--McCain and Palin.

[brooklyncitizen]

Well my cynicism is still intact...and yes I voted Obama and have a lot of admiration for him and Michelle...but he is a politician and his recent Security Team appointments gives me pause....it is not a team that will secure global peace, much less withdraw from Iraq. We are entering the darkest of times .

[FreedomAgain]

Maybe he took them to the side and said "I know you were forced to get us into this mess, now I'm giving you an opportunity to make it right by getting us out of this mess"

[harriscrl3]

You have a lot of admiration for him yet you basically are implying that he is going to be worse than Bush. Are you on expert on securing Global peace? If not you might want to put a caveat on that statement and say I dont think this team will secure global peace. Do you think peace comes by being a pacifist? He picked a team that is going to using ALL tools at America's disposal including Diplomacy. Is he suppose to pick a team that usese just diplomacy. Do you think you can use diplomacy against Jihadist. Obama is a hawk when it comes to fighting terrorism. Do you think he is gong to use the miltary and invade Venezuela? Pay attention to when he talks tough who is he talking about 9 out of 10 times its Al Queada, Jihadist extremist. There is NO negotiation with them. The best you can hope for is to attack the conditions that give rise to it like poverty.

Carol

[hortonhearsawho]

awwwwwwww, god not talking to you.

[chronic]

Um, you are new to politics, I'm sure.

[aweissnet]

Keep the cynicism intact. If he proves you right, you get the kudos for calling it. If he doesn't, you win also, cuz it's all better tomorrow.

However, your last statement sort of conflicts with the first part.

I retain cynicism (as I would of any politician), but I can't predict at this time why he made the calls and appointments that he did. From my perspective, this man has to be smarter than me and most of us. He couldn't have gotten the education that he did (without those important familial connections), made editor of the Law Review, and couple that with his undergrad degree and experience in the Senate. Most importantly, I'm guessing his IQ is up there. Because he's smarter than me, I think he probably knows things, can strategize, can see things, that I don't.

I think we have to rest assured that we put a man in office with an intelligence greater than our own, more than his experience, more even than his education.. That's WHY we did it, in great numbers.

Now we need to trust that intelligence will make better decisions than we would and certainly WAY WAY better than anyone I can think of recently in office. (ahem)

[harriscrl3]

YOU don tknow 100% how people will govern but their are clues that you can pick up on that give you some idea if its going to be a disaster or a success. One important ingredient is the person himself. He is humble he doesnt profess to know everything that means that he is likely to change when something looks like its not working. And he has said so when he said that there is going to be false starts and that he wants to try what will work he is not clouded by ideology he wants outcomes. Thats a different kind of President. Its so amazing to me one of the things he does is that he guards against being so much a product of Washington group think that he CREATES a board with people OUTSIDE Washington to make sure he has a way to basically keep him honest. Who the heck does that. He is meeting with governors to make sure that he is not creating policies from Washington that doesnt address their concerns. I mean who the heck does that. This guy has everything so planned out has looked throughout other Presidency and the past to see what works and what doesnt that its really hard for me to see how he is going to be a total screw up. I just cant see it so there is reason to be optimistic.

Carol

[teepeeyoyo]

I agree with you.....Bush came in with that "my daddy was President" arrogance, that irked me to no end. Good post.

[sonomarc]

Obama puts feedback loops (meeting with the guvs, wanting blackberry, putting his competitors in cabinet positions, etc.) into place. That's what makes him so powerful.

[hortonhearsawho]

You just keep reserving there fellow, we at the table with Obama...

[biglover]

Yeah Prakosh you keep reserving. We already know. He's going to be one helluva president. Better than any ever.

[skyglider]

MR "I AM UNEMPLOYED".....

The McCain/Palin team give a wit for people like Joe the Plumber.
If elected, do you believe they would give a wit for you ???
To be able to govern, the Obama Administration needs to get the most Heavy Hitters he can get hold on.
If All of them will follow his directions is premature to see at this moment, but it's better to have them by his side than otherwise.

What about having 4 more years of McCain/Palin/Karl Rove/Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannety/Ann Coulter Neo-Con-Supremacy ???....... If this is NOT music to your ears, then your 300 bucks were well spent !!!