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

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!

Anna - So what you are saying is that the school is not teaching your daughter anything. She is getting 100% on every paper and every test and she just doesn't know anything because they are not bothering to teach her and she is learning EVERYTHING that they ARE teaching. Furthermore, I assume you check her homework, make her correct it, make her read the requisite 20-30 minutes a day, and the school just refuses to teach her and won't give her advanced or exta credit assignments. But,somehow Obama will fix it. Are they going to next drill holes in the kids, heads and pour the information in? The schools don't need to teach anything more until the kids learn what the schools are already teaching.

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.

I don't give a damn if the money came from your grandma,'s stinky panty hose. I agree that some of the money may have come from republicans that wanted to bring up the issue of his donor process. But who the hell gives a damn! OBAMA won fair and square, despite all the crap that was thrown at him. Give him a chance to do things his way. We allowed Bush do his. Channel some of your negative energy toward helping this country get a steady footing once again.

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?

I can't believe reading some of the comments how really foolish some people think. You blind fools didn't go to his website, fill in Dora the Explorer, put in an amount, your card number, etc., and it go through.

We have screen shots and followed through. Money could have come in from anywhere and anyone. There was no accountability. In other words, foreign money, corporations, lobbyists, ect., could give any amount, from any country and it goes through. Especially, gift card money. America is blind and looking the other way when it comes to Obama.

No accountability is being held regarding his campaign money by not auditing the income. You want to know why 9/11 happened? By our USA government not doing their jobs! So ignore $650 million. America deserves the government we have because none of you care enough to write or call our congress for action.

I cannot believe the ignorance of our American people. You get what you ask for.

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.

McCain long championed campaign finance reform, although his final effort, McCain-Feingold, was compromised by the realities of politics. Perhaps we can look forward to an administration, if not Obama's then that of his successor, who will reconcile freedom of speech with necessary prohibitions of special interest organizations buying the President and Congress. Please consider first the inportance and urgency of this issue; governments fall due to corruption, and ours is fast becoming the most corrupt in history (both parties). Reform need only embody two ideas: 1. Contributions may come from only individuals, and must come directly from them. 2.Reporting must be so timely (and, thanks to the internet it can be) that when voters go to the polls, they know whose voices they have heard throughout the campaign; that they know what they are really voting for or against. Freedom of speech is a real American legacy, but prohibioting contributions from organizations, whether the UAW, GM, The Sierra Club, PETA, even SPEBSQSA (look that one up) is not a violation of that freedom. This ain't rocket science. Write your congressman and help make it happen.

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.

I think all of Obama's donations should be investigated, not just the small ones! I don't believe that all of his donations were legal and I think we'd be very surprised if we knew who some of his donations came from too!

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.

McChicken responded to my question, "Do you really want the richest or best financed candidate to win, rather than the best candidate?" with "In this case the richest or best financed candidate was the best candidate. Obama won not with money, but with votes. Get over it."
McChicken, if you look at my post, I was talking specifically about the precedent set with this election. I was not talking about Obama here, but about future candidates in future elections. Do you, in general, want it to become the norm that the path to victory is to be the wealthiest or best financed candidate? I am not the one who needs to "get over it."

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.

3.95 Million Americans gave to the Obama campaign. Those that supported him from the beginning gave more than the $200.00 level when their gifts were totaled up 2 years down the road.

580,000 Americans gave small donations in many steps that cause their total to be above the $200.00 mark.

If someone had told me that IF I gave $1,000.00 or more I would be considered a LARGE donor; I most likely would of made the one time payment.

I know a bunch of people that woud of jumped on the band wagon too.

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.

"Do you really want the richest or best financed candidate to win, rather than the best candidate?"

In this case the richest or best financed candidate was the best candidate. Obama won not with money, but with votes. Get over it.

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.

Folks, Jake is not pulling these figures and this analysis out of thin air. And he is not carrying the Republican's water. The study was done by a NONPARTISAN group interested in campaign finance. Or do you only listen to nonpartisan groups when they report things that agree with your established opinions?

The amount of money raised in this campaign cycle, by all the candidates but particularly by Barack Obama, is disturbing. Do you really want future politicians to take as their lesson that the key to success is massive fundraising? Do you really feel comfortable with a candidate being able to outspend his rival on ads by anywhere from 4 to 8 times as much in some states because one candidate took public financing and the other did not? Do you really want the richest or best financed candidate to win, rather than the best candidate?

You may dismiss my concerns as sour grapes if you wish, but I can truly say that I would be equally upset if a Republican candidate used the same sort of monetary advantage in a future election. One of the reasons I admire John McCain is McCain/Feingold, which was a good faith effort to bring some measure of control to campaign finance. The law has its flaws, but it is an important step in the right direction.

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.

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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.

Caliguy, you suggest that McCain (or JOhnny McSame as you so magnanimously and bipartisanly refer to him) did not have the number of small donors that Obama did. You use yourself as anecdotal evidence, so I will counter with my own example. I seriously doubt that Sen. McCain had only a few hundred donors like myself. I too donated small amounts multiple times, as did my spouse and my two young adult children. I also made small donations to Hillary Clinton. The act of making small donations that add up over time is not unique to this campaign or to this candidate. What is unique is the way his campaign successfully spun their donations as a new phenomenon, which they were, in fact, not.

As I recall, Obama used his base of small donors as an excuse to ignore his pledge to take public financing. Now the media discovers that this small donor base was statistically no greater than the small donor percentage of previous candidates of both parties. Funny, but during the campaign, numerous posters and bloggers pointed out that mathematically, the numbers did not seem to back up the Obama campaign's claims. He proceeded to spend his way to victory and now, after the fact, the media talks about what we already knew. I am seeing a pattern here.

And thanks to all the posters reminded ABC that there are other problems buried in that pile of donations that are crying out to be investigated.