Obama's $25M Haul Rivals Clinton Camp

We may not have as many folks able to make $100,000 contributions, but we've got 1000x as many people willing to make $100 contributions

EXACTLY. To all the politicians (Clinton, et al) who think the little people don't matter...suck it. We're still your constituents.

i completely agree. suddenly i find myself listening to recorded speaches and reading obama's articles. 1 month ago i dismissed his campaign as wishful thinking. i'm not impressed by the dollar figure. anyone can whore it out for the big money. i'm impressed by the number of donors. 100,000 people engaged in your pre-primary campaign? that doesn't come from kissing party ass.

We may not have as many folks able to make $100,000 contributions, but we've got 1000x as many people willing to make $100 contributions - and we know how to use pay pal.

And your point is...? $100k buys a lot more political influence, especially as it comes from a single source. As long as money is a primary component of politics, the deepest pockets will own the most politicians. But by all means, send him your $100 and hope he'll remember to represent you instead of the guy who sent him $1million.

Enigma Obama IS NOT taking PAC MONEY. This is a people's grassroots campaign not big business. He answers to the everyday person unlike the rest of the slaves to big business! Go Obama!!

www.barackobama.com

It doesn't even really matter whether I vote in the primary or not. It's already decided by the time it hits Indiana.

That's why I like the idea of clusters of states having their primaries on the same day and all primaries being within a relatively short period of time, like maybe 6 weeks. It would be something like having a cluster of states with primaries on one day, followed by 7-10 days for campaigning for the next cluster, and so forth. It would be exhausting for the politicians and their staff, but it would lessen the possibility of the race already being decided before a state could have its say.

I've seen several states recently starting to move their primaries up. I hope Indiana follows suit.

If it were up to me, this is how it would work:

States would be broken up into three tiers, by population (or delegate count, since Democrats don't strictly assign delegates based on population). Each tier would vote on the same date.

1. The first to vote would be the 5 or 7 smallest states.
2. The second to vote would be those medium population states, however many it took so that, combined with the first tier, the total delegates decided up to this point would equal somewhere between 51-60% of the total delegates. This should happen about 3 weeks after the first tier.
3. The last tier would be biggest states, by population (California, Texas, Florida, New York, plus a few others). This last vote probably a month after the second tier votes.

Advantages that I see are that small states would still be hit by politicians, especially insurgent politicians, who are seeking to make an early splash, but it wouldn't necessarily limit it to Iowa and New Hampshire, with their diverse and representative populations (*cough*). Also, medium-sized states, which seem somewhat ignored now, could theoretically, with the smallest states, perhaps deliver an early nomination to a strong candidate. So the medium states would also get some attention. Finally, the largest states, even though they're going last, still provide the biggest payoff; and, of course, no candidate will ignore a large state entirely during the campaign, because they need the large states, at least some of them, to win the general election.

Oh yeah, and the earliest any primary could be held would be April 1, because what better day to officially kick off the presidential campaign than April Fools Day?

What about April 15 when people are pissed off because they're paying their taxes?

What about April 15 when people are pissed off because they're paying their taxes?

I'd rather people be able to see straight, rather than blind with rage, when they picked the leader of the free world. How often have you made rational choices when you pissed off? ;-)

Wolfger, you raise a good point. I would like to point out, however, that Obama has done a fairly good job -- better than his rivals -- of spelling things out on his website. The site provides a abstracts on major issues and links to relevant speeches. There aren't extensive whitepapers on the direction of foreign policy in Southeast Asia over the past 50 years. As nice as that would be for a few people, it might be a bit much for most.

I believe everything a candidate stands for can (and should be) easily be summed up in 1000 words or less. It is only the application of those standing principles that things become complex.

There are so many micro-issues that candidates could spend years formulating policy on minutia. In doing so, I believe they actually run the risk of having their campaign loose focus on more important issues. We need to hear what candidates think about health care, not about improving conditions for the pygmy farmers of Timbuktu.

It's not necessarily Obama's (or any other politician's) fault.

How they hell are they supposed to sum up their beliefs and record into the 30 second sound bites you get from the nightly news?
And even when giving a rallying speech, he's not going to run down the last 12 years' voting record.

It's up to the voter to educate themselves - there are plenty of resources out there that show his bipartisanship record, how he voted on different issues, and info from him on why he voted that way (IE, when he voted no to the partial abortion ban - it wasn't because he's for partial birth abortion. Its because the way the bill was worded would have effectively nixed abortion altogether).

There is plenty of information to dig up on each candidate. I don't see candidates avoiding issues; I see news media not giving a damn and just playing to the hype.

Yeah, because the last thing we need in this country is another president like Lincoln, regularly regarded as one of the three greatest presidents ever.

Scary, why???

Was there something horrible about Lincoln I'm missing? Or is it just the eerie similarities that make you say "Scary"?

Lincoln was responsible for the death's of hundreds of thousands of people, and absolutely destroying the concept of state's rights and sovereignty at the point of a gun, beginning the consolidation of unprecedented power in the Federal government.

Lincoln was a Whig, which was one of the parties that made up the Republican Party when he was elected. The Whig platform called for heavy subsidies, a central bank, and a myriad other policies that had previously been considered unconstitutional.

Similarly, Obama has called for Universal Health Care, which is as unconstitutional as it comes.

But the similarities so far are mostly superficial. I just wanted to point them out. Th whole "unexperienced politician from Illinois now running for President and seen as an underdog" angle is quite interesting.

Was there something horrible about Lincoln I'm missing?

Well, he did start a civil war, and squashed state's rights with a strong federal government, holding the "United" states together at the business end of a cannon. I'd consider that pretty horrible. Of course, the victors write the history books, so most folks are shocked to hear anybody say anything negative about him.

He was, I think, a good man. But one of the best presidents? I'm not seeing that.

Sad but true. Nobody in recent history (ever?) has been elected with a mere million dollars in his pocket.

Agreed. What scares me more is WHY those willing to pay such large sums, are paying them? And what do the candidates have to do in return?

It's undemocratic because democratic systems by their very nature give one vote to each person, anything else is a corporate dictatorship. Why not just have the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies decide amongst themselves who will be the next president, It would certainly save a lot of time. What you effectively have now is a small group of donators with large amounts of money and influence determining who the public gets to vote for.

By the way, this isn't intended as criticism of Obama, he seems to me to be the best of the presidential hopefuls (even though we don't really know what his policies are yet) and lot of his support does genuinely seem to be coming from the grassroots.