Report: Obama Didn’t Have as Many Small Donors as Was Hyped

So yet another Obama Myth is…BUSTED!

Who cares? The important thing is that he ran a brilliant campaign, won big, and will soon get us rid of dull W.

I think it’s misleading to set the cutoff at $200 and claim that anyone above that is not a “small donor”. I had NEVER contributed to a political campaign before but I contributed several times, over the internet, to the Obama campaign. My contributions were usually in $20-30 increments. I was surprised to see, at the end of the campaign, that my contributions added up to almost $300. According to this report, I’m not a “small donor”. (Maybe I’m some kind of “fat cat”?) I would certainly consider myself a small donor, however, and I’m sure there are many more with similar stories to mine.

I find this article a little misleading for two reasons:
1. It discounts the fact that Senator Obama would have never survived the Democratic Primary without small donations from individual supporters.
Senator Clinton had a lock on the big money donors, and without small donors, Senator Obama could have never ben competitive.
It is unfair to quote stastistics from AFTER the primaries were over and the big money naturally flowed to the Democratic Nominee.
2. It discounts the fact the people like me who have NEVER contributed to a political campaign entered the process for the first time and made multiple (small)donations. Just because I count as “one donor”, doesn’t change the fact that EVERYTIME I gave (more than 10 times) is one more than I EVER gave before.

“It is unfair to quote stastistics from AFTER the primaries were over and the big money naturally flowed to the Democratic Nominee.”
Why is it unfair, if the candiadte is constantly bringing the point up at virtually every rally?

Okay Mike C.
It was fair to bring it up.
Misleading but fair.
Feel better now?

This is poppycock, Jake.
One of the virtues of having a large pool small donors is that you can go back to them repeatedly for more money over a long campaign; this feature of Obama’s donor pool was commonly discussed by the campaign. Obviously, if the strategy of soliciting repeat donations works, you will convert many of them from small donors (less than $200) to medium-sized donors ($200-$500). That doesn’t make the donors patricians, and it doesn’t convert the fact that many Obama supporters started with modest donations into a “myth.”

LOL,…people…peole…all this is saying is what most people knew, unless of course you bought into the propoganda.
His campaign was no more funded by the small contributors than Bush was in 2004.
He did however do a much much better job than previous campaigns getting that “mid-range” group from 200 to 1000 dollars.
He should be pounding his chest over what he did from the aspect of raised monies. Just be honest about the sources, why lie?
Your right…he won….so why lie?
In the bigger picture, the country does need to look at is some mechanism of limiting campaign spending however.
Obama took almost as much money as Bush/Kerry combined. When we are spending half a billion dollars to win the presidency, there is need for CHANGE all right.
I thought having 2 candiates spending near 500 million was insane in ’04!
Since this study only included post convention numbers, its hard to tell exactly how much this election did cost overall. Im sure someone can do a little net searching and come up with the number.

Rather then suggest that the campaign’s assertion that they received donations from predominantly small donors, Id suggest it is misleading to recategorize small donors to larger donors by amalgamating their smaller donations. Smaller donors cannot afford to give large lump sum donations and thus they give smaller increments over time. They are still small donors! Funny how folks like to nit pick over things like this ..nothing better to do now that the campaign has ended??

The true will get out soon. This campaign hype was based in the small donors and change. Obama is bringing the same insiders, first with Daschle he and his wife are lobbyist and before he was a full time insider in DC, you add to that the whole Clinton troop, Richardson (and his poor record as Energy Secretary), all those people are the same ones Obama campaign criticized as the “past and old Washington.” Now the big donors were big corporations in infrastructure, health, Wall Street, Hedge Funds, Private Equity companies, Media and Entertainment, Hollywood stars, and Unions. All of them poured millions of dollars to the Obama campaign and all will want a piece of the pie!
For example Citi just got a sweet deal, sure Richard Parson’s and Rubin who are in the Obama economic transition team are members of the Citi Board!
CHANGE WE CAN’T BELIEVE IN
LOL

There is nothing misleading about this report, which finally shows how extremely misleading the Obama campaign was, and still is, about financing. They would have you believe that almost all the massive amount of money they raised to buy the presidency came from “small donors” They wanted voters to believe that just about everyone they bumped into in the elevator was contributing to Obama. It was not ever true, and now they are exposed as the liars they have always been. These numbers have been around for months, but yet again, the main stream media was so busy kissing up to Obama, that they failed the people of the USA.
Of course, the true Obama followers will never believe that their idol has feet of clay.
As for PEBO, if Obama wasn’t so anxious to stand behind fake signs that he thinks give him prestige – Office of the President-Elect, LOL!, – it wouldn’t be so funny.

You’re a bit late Jake, I saw this same story many months ago…you know while the MSM was still ignoring facts…I even put it in your blog, you ignored the bots denied…so now that the election is over, it’s true?!

So, because I gave in increments of $20.00 to $50.00 multiple times over a period of many months, I am not considered a small donor? That’s BS.
Millie,
Look at the actual table shown on the page the link at the top of the story takes you to. It breaks it out in 3 steps. 1000

“We know less about people who stayed at $200 or below because $201 is the trigger for FEC disclosure. ”
This is the key sentence about the $200 mark that Jake should have included in his story above.

When the fog finally clears will anything Obama did or said during the campaign turn out to be true? Certainly doesn’t look that way.

Please, you are looking for something you hope would put Obama in a bad light? Sorry, after 8 yrs. of Bush, Obama is looking better and better. But keep digging you might just end up making something up because you can’t find anything! LOL

This is a very misleading article. I gave $25-$50 at a time plus purchased T-Shirts which counted as a donation. In all I donated around $700 and I certainly consider myself a small donor who gave small amounts over a many months.

OH come on Jake, this is rather misleading by itself, isn’t it? The whole point to Obama’s campaign was that he had a pool of small donors who would eventually mature to big donors because they keep giving. Usually, and this is a big point so don’t dismiss it, when his campaign referred to the number of small donors, they did so in a month-by-month basis. So if somebody was a part of the monthly small donor list that maybe made up for 50% of his contribution, it doesn’t necessarily mean that person would be part of such list when the whole 12-months or 4-months is analyzed together. And the Obama campaign always reported their numbers month-by-month, as is the requirement by law. I would very much like Mike_C to a particular statement made by the campaign that turned out to be a Myth that has been pointed. And because I would like to do a myth busting of my own, consider this:
The month of March: Campaign claims the average donation was $96, with 442,000 contributors. Does the report claim to spot a lie in such statements? Obviously the small donor percentage for that month would have to be a lot more than 26% to make the average $86. However, one has to assume that if somebody was giving as early as March, that somebody is likely to give again at the late stages but somebody’s total is likely to exceed 200 by the time the whole thing is done.
Frankly, I think this claim is more of an insult (and at the same time reassuring) to his donors than a debunker of a campaign myth. It proves that their small donations were indeed big; it also says they were liars for counting themselves as small donors… they are no better than money bundlers.
just what I think.
disclaimer: I didn’t donate.

So is the real historical aspect of Obama’s fundraising the fact that he raised such obscene amounts of cash from fewer donors, not a massive pool?

Given enough time, some Obama nut jobs will understand that he is a liar. He has back pedaled on jacking up taxes on the richest and he’s even back pedaled on Iraq. The only thing he has not changed is his lie that he didn’t know Wright is such an a##. Does anyone know that up until election day Obama’s website says he believes that the fed. govt. should be pay-as-you-go? Obama is a politician…just a big liar. Got news for everyone. He isn’t the Messiah and he will prove that he has the integrity of a televangelist!

I gave $100 to Obama twice, so that makes me a “large” donor? I don’t think so..

Another thing, small donors become big donors if they give more than $200?
You are kidding me right?
This is ridiculous….Barack has an army of small donors who gave a little each month to help him. To consider anyone that gives over $200 a LARGE donor is stupid…
But I will try and call up Chicago and demand my ambassadorship now that I am such a large donor.
Barack’s way worked and there are folks still trying to prove that it didn’t. Good luck with that…off to pack now for my appointment.

So the lobbyists bought another election
in small increments and we are already seeing Obama et al paying them off. So what else is new in politics? I didn’t give nor did I vote for either candidate..why waste energy on the same old political crooks. Is democracy dead? Who knows.

For those of you bemoaning the fact that your numerous donations totaled over $200 over an extended period of time…
The perception the Obama campaign peddled was that he was being funded by “Mom and Pop donations of $100 or less” meaning millions of people making small donations. This helped perpetuate the bandwagon effect that a majority of the people were for Obama, thus to be part of the “in” crowd (which is so very important to way too many Americans), you must vote for Obama. This scenario loses its lustre when the reality is that many of his millions were coming from the same Mom and Pops donating over and over (well over the $100 purported by his campaign).
Does this matter? No more so than the media’s pushing of the “inevitability factor” that the support for Obama was so strong that nothing (except racism) could stop him.
The results were seen at the ballot box with some people voting for Obama simply because they thought it was a done deal and they wanted to be able to say that they voted for the first African-American president.
Of course, I’m more interested in the donors who gave under $200 which don’t have to be reported. We know that one such donor was Obama’s aunt living illegally in this country – who by law can’t make a donation to any campaign, but somehow did so numerous times without being caught doing so.

“Barack’s way worked and there are folks still trying to prove that it didn’t. Good luck with that…off to pack now for my appointment.”
Noone is trying to say it didn’t work. I think it was a brilliant strategy. In the end, he did raise more money than anyone in the history of American Politics.
as we look to the future though, will the next election show us the first biliion dollar President ?

Like others, I gave a number of small donations over time which added up to about $400. So suddenly I am a big donor? Get real. The fundraising worked. The election was an electoral landslide, and the societal/political pendulum in this country is swinging back to center from far right.

One would have to be very naive to believe that all that money came from small donors.
Posted by: JULIE | Nov 25, 2008 10:07:47 AM
—————————————-
No you don’t! I gave $5.00 each of the 3 times I gave. And LOOK at how many people voted for him. It is not hard to beleive that he had many, many small donors. What we have to keep in mind is: that of whatever we hear,or read, the person presenting the information has to pay their bill too!

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
It turns out that Barack Obama’s donors may not have been quite as different as we had thought. Throughout the election season, this organization and others have been reporting that Obama received about half of his discrete contributions in amounts of $200 or less. The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) noted in past releases that donations are not the same as donors, since many people give more than once. After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated.
“The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama’s finances,” said CFI’s executive director Michael J. Malbin. “The reality of Obama’s fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth.”

“but the true story is that campaign finance reform and McCain-Feingold are utter failures and need to be eliminated, forthwith.’
That’s a big part of it, but the WHOLE story is that Obama reneged on his promise to accept public financing. This about-face was papered over in part by the propagation of the Myth of the Small Donor. Couple this with the fact that the campaign turned off basic internet credit card security measures, and accepted many donations from untraceable prepaid credit cards, and you have a big problem with the future of clean campaign finance.

The hypothetical of the poor person donating 20 bucks a month for a year probably does not account for much of his donations. Otherwise they would have pushed the data on this one.
This is just another sign of the snowjob.

This report is nothing but a piece of crap. I donated $15, $20, $50 amounts because I cannot afford large donations. The fact that some fool decided to add all my donations over the 2 year period of Baracks campaign does not make me a rich donor. Now you can choose to deny the fact that Obama had more donors (small donors) than any presidential candidate ever, but that does not alter any truth of the matter. Use any theories you may wish to use, in order to try to disprove the fact that he managed to raise a never seen before army of small donors, the truth remains that he did. If I were you, I would be trying learn from his machinery rather than waste my time trying to find ways to disprove what he achieved. Bush has not had any small donor base close to Obama’s multitudes of donors.

bco,
You act like these terms were just invented. They have been there for a while!
With all the economic issues going on now, the real question that should be in everyone’s head is should we be spending over a billion dollars to elect a president?
We complain about CEO pay and Oil company profits. are we really willing to see Presidential races clims to well over a billion dollars ?

Right Wing crybabies and complainers: turn off Hannity and go back to work. Your guy lost. Get over it.

I must have given $400 since October 2007. Yeah, I am a big donor!!! I want to be ambassador to Alaska, …sorry Russia.

LOL, listening to this you people sound like the followers of the various TV Evangelists. Handing out their last few pennies…
If you gave, good for you. If you did not understand the process of how the FEC handles these things, thats your own issue. Don’t whine about it after, hell…your guy won. It just kinda of hard to take the fact he is no different than any other politician in how he got there.

Diamond,
Good for you. Since you and your wife invested $200 in our Greatest Leader, and he promised to give each of you $1000 if you voted for him. You will have a net return of 1000%!
As for me, I gave him $0 dollars, and I get a return of infinity.

LOL, listening to this you people sound like the followers of the various TV Evangelists. Handing out their last few pennies…
If you gave, good for you. If you did not understand the process of how the FEC handles these things, thats your own issue. Don’t whine about it after, hell…your guy won. It just kinda of hard to take the fact he is no different than any other politician in how he got there.
Posted by: Mike_C | Nov 25, 2008 12:43:36 PM
================================
ummmm. That would be the evangelicals who vote overwhelmingly and blindly for the GOP.

What is defined as a small donor? $10.00 a month for two years makes $240.00. That seems to me to be small donations over time.

Mike C. Give it up will you? Obama is our President. Accept it. Get on with life.

I was going to jump on the Obama bashing wagon too but $200 is a big donor? What a joke! I want to know how much Oprah gave.

You “small donors” are funny. Don’t you realise that the standards are the same for every candidate? Don’t you realise that Obama knew exactly what those standards were every time he bragged about the number of small donations his campaign attracted? Do you seriously believe that only the Obama campaign attracted small donations?
They manipulated the numbers, as has already been pointed out.
What is still to come is a legal review of the illegal donations the Obama campaign accepted.
Why is it OK to break the law if you are Barack Obama?

Jake, you gotta remember that these donors gave over the whole dual campaign push–from battling Hillary to battling John and that our contributions, mine was $50 a month, can add up. If you donated to Obama, you probably donated more than $200 over the 14 month campaign. We still count as SMALL donors.
And really, is this news?

There have been reports of donors using those “Pre-Paid” credit cards, which could be illegal foreign donors. All this needs to come to light, because all during the campaign it was reported that it was small donors giving what amounted to millions of dollars.
Let the truth come to light!

One thing that was not manipulated the election results:):):):):):):):)

the condescension is so astounding sometimes.
Mike_C, so we can all read. And we read the ACTUAL link. It leads me to the question: did you UNDERSTAND the article? Nobody is disputing the facts. The facts are the facts. I don’t know about others, but I am disputing the conclusion about the reported myth. As you are reading on this very board, people are quite willing to explain how it worked: they gave small donations in increments. That’s the same claim that was made throughout the year by the campaign, the media and even the donors themselves. What is this Big Myth that this report is supposed to have busted?
Since you are quite skilled at reading, you may have also noticed that 67% of his incoming donation was in the $1-999 range. If we need to compare, that figure is 43% for Bush. As you can gather from the comments here, most people who considered themselves small donors would fall into that 67% category. Again, show me the myth.
Janic, I have read the book. What should I have been looking for?

My grandkids did not deal well with our sons deployments it was heart breaking to see there faces so hurt and scared for our son my daughter in law it was a sad sad time and as for myself my health did not fair well so please do not talk about (TRUTH) I thank GOD every day that our son came home safe there are so many who did not (TRUTH) how dare you Republicans use the word (TRUTH)

what gets me is you republicans gave to the Palin/McCain show

So how about the contributions on one time credit cards signed Donald Duck and Micky Mouse? (Some reporter did a test and his nonsense contributions WERE accepted.) Were they counted as separate donors?

Bud is right. People who contributed $20 or $30 a month a small donors. So there donations added up to more than $200. So what? I’ve given moprethan $200 to cnadidates but I’m nowhere near a $1,000, for example. I’m a small donor.

This study is idiotic. Obama said he had 3.95 million “contributors.” This study does not dispute that. Now the definition of small vs. big donors is debatable. I gave $4,300 in increments that never exceeded $500. Before this year i had never contributed to a Presidential campain. The most important thing they should study is “How much money did Obama raise over the internet.”

W. R. Johnson: I agree, I would have never thought of myself as a “big donor”. I guess it is in who is calling it. Now if it was a Republicans we would be considered “small donors”.

I am retired and not a big donor. However, my wife and I gave $25 to $50 at a time for a total that must be close to $800. Our first donation was on 2/15/08 which means these donations were over 10 months. We have never donated like this before and squeezed these frequent donations out of our budget.
It is amazing that anyone would look at people like us and think that we are rich or big donors. We are people of modest means who really cared about electing Obama.

This is the most blogging I have read on this site since the election. LOL Jake must be loving it today.

I would love to see the spirit of hope and change move him to full disclosure so we would know exactly who, where and how much money was poured into this “buy the presidency” campaign. Of course, I’d also like to have exray vision ….

Three things concern me. 1. How much money came from overseas. 2. How much money came from the internet. 3. To me there is NO difference between a Bundler and lobbist/PAC money.. A Bundler is a new and improve fancier name for a lobbist/PAC money.
One other thing…. I want a CAP on how much an individual may raise to spend on a campaign. Think of all the money that was spent. It is ridiculous the amount of money that has been raised in the last 4 elections. There are people that are homeless because they have lost their job. There are people that are working two jobs to make ends meat to feed their family of 4. There are people that can’t afford health insurance.

As one of the Obama “big donors,” I think some of this discussion misses the point. The millions of people who made small donations that, over the course of the campaign, added up to more than $200 were not looking to become Ambassador to Trinidad or get oil drilling rights in Yosemite National Park. They gave because they wanted a President they could be proud of.

55mariposa: “Three things concern me. 1. How much money came from overseas. 2. How much money came from the internet. 3. To me there is NO difference between a Bundler and lobbist/PAC money.. A Bundler is a new and improve fancier name for a lobbist/PAC money.”
No difference between a bundler and a lonbbiest? A lobbiest is paid by a distinct private interest to advise political figures with information and research that encourages legislation favorable to the private interest.
A bundler is an individual that hits up his/her friends and connections to donate to a given campaign. The corporate bundler is really a creation of Karl Rove, where he recruited CEOs of private firms to bundle donations to win implied access to the administration. Bush’s unprecedented success leveraging bundlers in response to the McCain-Feingold act allowed him to dominate campaign spending the last two cycles. Bundlers do not provide research, data or make policy requests, they just ask their friends and network to donate to a candidate.
If you can’t see the large and basic differences between a lobbiest and a bundler then I’m not sure why you don’t look it up yourself before making a statement that only serves to make you look woefully uniformed.

Phishmelt :”millionaires could have gave tens or hundreds of thousands like this. And did.”
So how long should we wait for proof of your fantasy?

Of course, the Obama campaign would reject the study. Obama and his surrogates have skewed American political debate on perception, not facts. They have utilized the MSM to report perceptions as facts. It will be years before we find out the true facts of this election. The MSM became irrelevant and lost all credibility in American culture from this point forward.

OMG
You mean some Obama hype isn’t factual?
The horror.
Posted by: Dood
*************************
No, just your comment. This was the first time
I ever donated to a presidential race and anyone who wants to add to this can. BTW, Good ole’ Donald Trump tried to sneak another $2400.00 to the McCain committee but was caught. I’m sure he
gave it to McCain through a third party donor.

What?? Look, I donated to Obama’s campaign every single week-$10.00 to $50.00 a month-I believe in him. Distort and discuss all you want but the Presidential campaign is over. Lets move on!
Our economy is failing and thousands are losing jobs-lets pull together not apart-You don’t know if you will wake up tomorrow morning and have no job. My husband just lost his job after 15 years in what we thought was a stable agency. Lets talk about what is a real issue to solve-

Edit for post below:
Percent of Bush donors donating total of $999 or less: 38% (503,198 donors)
Percent of Obama donors donating total of $999 or less: 53% (2,093,500 donors)
Still OBVIOUSLY completely equal….
:p
P.S. Jake,
I’m not sure how the fact that 53% of donors contributed $999 or less “demolishes the myth that President-elect Obama was largely funded by small donors” as you state.
And considering they nearly all will likely get that $1000 tax cut, it was probably a good investment.

I personally gave $225.00, everyone I know personally did the same…..even my elderly parents, neighbors, co-workers, volunteers, etc. Sounds like sour grapes to me

I thought having 2 candiates spending near 500 million was insane in ’04!
Since this study only included post convention numbers, its hard to tell exactly how much this election did cost overall. Im sure someone can do a little net searching and come up with the number.
Posted by: Mike_C
*************************
You know what should really be the
issue in this ? What did the media do
with the $billion in revenue they got
with this campaign. (I bet this gets censored!)

Careful Jake. Must not question “THE MESSIAH” in front of all his mindless minions. Barack Obama’s campaign was fueled by small donors, got it. The truth is whatever he says it is. Leave it at that-or else.

That’s right Jake. By the way, who is the MESSIAH? I didn’t get my money either!!!

I challenge any of President Elect Obama’s detractors to provide ONE IDEA to improve either campaign finance and/or the American Economy.
It is easy to attack somebody else’s plans and ideas.
Do you have any of your own?
What are they?
I’d love to hear those instead of the constant stream of gripes and complaints.

When my 7 year old reads a story she has difficult time answering questions about the story, why b/c she is not comprehending what she is reading. She is in public school. Obama understands that USA has the worst education in its history and worse than many other countries. Don’t you think that children are our future and who we raise now will run this country? McCain wanted to fix our poor education with vouchers???!!!??? What the heck do vouchers have to do with poor curriculum, low standards and uneducated teachers???? Who cares if Obama contributors went over the coveted $200 threshold? What you should be worried about is corporations such as GM contributing millions and NOT you’re slightly better off neighbor who had $200 more than you and now he is over the threshold and is being considered a large donor. That is not the point really. If a person contributed who can not influence Obama later or blackmail him, who cares.

At this point, does who gave to PEBO’s campaign make a difference? He ran a great campaign, won the presidency and now the REAL work starts. I didn’t vote for PEBO, but I wish him well … after all the Office of President is bigger than any one person and for sake of our country and the future of our citizens, we all need to support the Office even if we disagree with who’s holding the job, but continue to be vigilant of the policies, practices and positions being taken by those in charge, including Congress.

“I challenge any of President Elect Obama’s detractors to provide ONE IDEA to improve either campaign finance and/or the American Economy.”
That’s not particularly challenging now is it? Cut capital gains taxes to zero, cut corporate taxes, cut marginal income tax rates, cut federal spending. Put a time limit on political campaigns. We shouldn’t have to suffer through campaigns that are two years long, and it would also put an end to billion dollar campaigns.

I donated $10 every time someone sent me one of those “Obama is an arab/muslim/transgender/wife beating/communist/ terrorist emails. I’m sure it must have totaled more than $200!

“That’s not particularly challenging now is it? Cut capital gains taxes to zero, cut corporate taxes, cut marginal income tax rates, cut federal spending. Put a time limit on political campaigns.” – Eye Doc
Eye Doc,
Once we finish cutting everyone’s taxes, how do you propose we dig ourselves out of our current deficit, especially while still fighting two wars?
Do you think we can cut enough “waste” to cover more than $12 billion dollars a month for war AND the billions and billions of dollars that are now being spent to nationalize all of these banks?

I want to laugh so loud…LOL!
I never believe it ever… but you have to believe in him because he is Obama.

The world will be utopia after Jan 20th. The skys will be more blue the oceans will be clean and all the obama supporters will have money in the bank. All of us “rich” folk will be broke and out of a job. Oh wait, we own the companies that supply jobs. Oh well. The messiah will fix it.

So now,,Jake, dig it up again where those big donors come from.

The bigger story is the credit card donations with no name verification – where was the media on that?
Why is there no pressure on Obama to release the list of less than $200 donations? And how much of his over $600 million raised came from gift cards bought by foreigners?

Posted by: mfmros | Nov 25, 2008 4:26:07 PM
Well it was between McCain and Obama. After 8 years of a republican, we wanted to see a dem in the white house. Now that’s what I consider change.

The claim of those who exceeded the $200 while giving, let’s say $10 a month, that they are “small donors” is ridiculous. $1,000 or $500 is $1,000 or $500 no matter how you give it, in tens, fives or $1,000 at a time. The total sum of your contribution is what makes the difference. And yes, this is another lie of Obama’s campaign. The funny thing is that I don’t understand why Jake is bringing this up now.

Nashville_fan “the rest of us will be trying to SAVE OUR COUNTRY, seeing as it was left in tatters by all the half-baked foreign and domestic policies the Republican party has been trying out on us for the past 7 years and 10 months.” — I’m just wondering, if you believe our country is in tatters, why have you waited to try to save it?? Jump right in and get to work. No need to wait for Obama. There’s plenty to be done now and many of us (republicans and democrats) are already working to save it.

If you were relying on Bush to save you you are disappointed. If you are relying on Obama to save you ,you will be disappointed. Government cannot help you . You have to help yourself. That is why I’m a conservative. That is why I don’t have major problems and am very happy. Liberals always depend on someone else, such as Katrina victims,that is why they will always be waiting for a savior. Good luck with that!

There was no way I would have given 1 dime to this MORON. The way he blew money I could have used some of the millions he blew, OH where is my money he was suppose to help out the little guy with by the way.LOL I never believed a word this guy said, and I still can’t believe all the people that fell for him

So are wingnuts going to act like crybabies for the next 4 years or what? I love reading the unhinged rants from idiotic talk radio listeners who still can’t believe Obama won. I love it!

First of all the idea that you could fund a campaign on 5.00 is really not
dealing in reality. The important thing here is it gave folks like us a voice
however small it was. That is more important in the end!I hardly consider
200.00 a big contribution do you?

I gave 6 to 8 times. My last donation was $5. My largest donation was $25. I’m self-employed, single, and a full-time non-traditional college student. I think I’m pretty typical of the average Obama supporter.

Now Jake why don’t you check the donor list and see how many are not even legit and foreign. Was there money laundering going on?

This is such biased non-analytical thinking! If the cut off is $250 for you to report it as a ‘small donor’ contribution, then it is time to raise the ‘small donor’ designation perhaps. Over an 18 month campaign, $1,000 is only about $55/month. Should $55 a month for Obama supporters be lumped in with $10,000 a month contributions? I think not.
The PEOPLE elected Obama, not large donors. It doesn’t matter how you spin it for the sore-losing republicans you represent, the educated critical thinking new America knows the real deal.
Sorry Rush (ooops, Jake), your analysis is flawed and obviously wants to slant dum-dum opinion. Instead, why not fight the good fight and ask whether small donors in 2008 should be limited to a $13 a month in order to NOT be considered large donors? Can’t even fill your gas tank for a week on $13 to put this in perspective.

cturple,
Posted by: countrygirl_74 |
There was no way I would have given 1 dime to this MORON. The way he blew money I could have used some of the millions he blew, OH where is my money he was suppose to help out the little guy with by the way.LOL I never believed a word this guy said, and I still can’t believe all the people that fell for him
…………..
If this typifies a Republican – it’s no wonder you guys lost.
————–
Exactly. They’d rather make sure Sarah Palin was dressed and made up nice-nice for Joe the Plumber to fawner all over. Sarah is the new CEO, so, by their twisted logic, she deserves better than her own supporters. They don’t seem to *get that politicians are public servants either.

I gave about 7-8 times, my smallest donation was $5 and my largest was $40. I probably just barely broke the $200 mark over the course of the primary and the general election. I own my own biz.

Hey, jake. You have been pretty good this season, but even you need to ride herd harder on this Obama BS. We knew this all along, and we also know—so please don’t hold off any more—that many of his donations are illegal, foreign and from those who have maxed out. There is still time to save us from an Obama presidency, what with the SCOTUS reviewing the birth certificate issue and the Kenyans building a monument to his birthplace.

Oh come on, what is the rest of the breakdown? What is the percentage between $200 and $1000. I guarantee its much higher than for Bush.
I am sure that if you look a bit further, the true “reality” is this: Obama created a whole lot of new small donors out of people who never gave before (to get to that 3.95 million number), and over the course of the campaign turned a $20 donor into a $200 donor and the $100 donor into a $300 donor. I gave over $500 to Obama, but on about 8-10 different occasions. The real story is not that so many new donors got involved, but that Obama managed to up-sell donors into repeat donations.

The Obama myth only exists in the minds of the lemmings that elected him. No matter how obvious his lies become or how atrocious his performance is, those same lemmings will remain oblivious and will continue to tout him as a messiah and the answer to all the worlds’ woes. Because those lemmings only pay attention when they are told to pay attention and American politics isn’t about being the most qualified, having the best ideas or doing the best job, it’s about misleading the greatest number of people. Congrats Mr. Obama, you were able to mislead the greatest number of people.

This is not news, this information was out there before today but I doubt it’s that coincidental that the Obama camp would put out today that they plan to limit Inagural contributions to $50,000. They will and have thrown us a bone here and there to let the uninformed believe that Obama is not a corporate candidate like all the others
and to make us believe that radical change in regards to campaign reform is on it’s way. If it ever is at all from this administration it won’t be until after 2012 when he’s ran and won the Presidency again. Obama did nothing this election that other candidates haven’t and won’t in regards to campaign funds , his camp just did a better job of convincing those who don’t do their homework that somehow they were different. I don’t fault the Obama camp for being the same old corporate politics that is the norm but rather I fault them on their pretending to be something they are not. Campaign reform is a major issue and is in part at the root of our economic crisis. We need to take corporate money out of politics. I support capitalism and I support democracy but corporate money is corrupting democracy and we need to give the power back to the people. Obama reneged on public financing and that should have been a first clue in regards to his committment on real campaign reform and limiting the influence of the corporate world on the political system. Most people in this Country don’t even know what public financing is and who was publicly financed and who was not and how that fits into the bigger scheme in regards to the decisions our politician’s make. How anyone can say this Country shifted more to the left of center when most don’t even understand the issues of the left is a joke.

My husband is an American citizen, we live in Canada. Obama returned money to him when he couldn’t provide a passport number. He explained that as an American citizen, he doesn’t need a passport to come to Canada. He offered to provide his Social Security number instead. They returned the money because they said its their policy to return funds where no passport number could be provided.
So all you who are saying the Obama campaign accepted illegal foreign contributions are fools. I’ve never heard of ANY political organization turning away money. They are on the up and up all they way.
By the way, my husband voted for the very first time in his life for Obama via an Absentee Ballot. He donated small amounts as he could afford them, $20 or $25 dollars at a time since January. I think in total he spent something like $300.

Okay, now that we know that some rich folks bought themselves a president, all we have left to find out is where was this puppet made? Birth certificate please. Can you get that for us Jack?

The question now arises: The so-called small donors who contributed repeatedly up to the $4,600 legal limit in small increments of $200 or less, did they contribute their own money or was the money channeled through them by the super rich with a stake in the outcome of the election? It’s hard to believe that the average American, struggling to stay financially afloat in this hard times, could afford to make campaign contributions of any size.

Well Carlos, let me be one of those people to testify for you. I contributed 20 to 35 a month for 19 months. Every month! I think I give one 40 when Palin was selected, so yes it is possible and no i am not rich. But 10 every 2 weeks isnt a whole lot at all. SO believe it!