Endorsements for Sale | Drudge Retort

"Scott Thomas, a Democrat and a former FEC chairman, said "there's probably no doubt" the PAC donations were aimed at increasing support for Obama's presidential race. "But in my experience, the commission has not had the stomach to reach out and characterize those kinds of contributions as impermissible," Thomas said.

Kent Cooper, the FEC's retired chief of public disclosure, said the commission, if it chose, could declare that Obama's presidential campaign and PAC were "affiliated," meaning some activities involving the PAC could be declared in-kind contributions to the presidential campaign that would exceed current donation limits.

"At this stage of the race, for a presidential candidate, it is a brazen effort to use every avenue to influence an election," Cooper said. "I can't believe the Obama people can keep a straight face and claim these aren't part of the presidential race."

Just politics as usual, eh?

Posted by Corky at 2007-12-02 05:28 PM | Reply | Flag:

An Attack, From the Candidate's Mouth
By Patrick Healy

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa At a news conference here just now, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton expanded her attacks on Senator Barack Obama by suggesting that he has a character issue because of his assertions that his health insurance plan covers all Americans (which she disputes) and because his old political action committee spread around money in early presidential nominating states.

Asked if Mr. Obama had a character problem, Mrs. Clinton first said it was up for voters to determine, but then added:

"It's beginning to look a lot like that it really is, where we can't get a straight answer on health care, where somebody runs on ethics and not taking money from certain people is found to have at least skirted if not violated F.E.C. rules and to use lobbyists and Pac money to do so.

You're going to have ask the Obama campaign, but I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans and attacking problems of our country because ultimately that's what I want to do as president.

"But I have been for months on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks well now the fun part starts," Mrs. Clinton said, punctuating the word "fun." "We're into the last month, and we're going to start drawing the contrasts, because I want every Iowans to have accurate information when they make their decisions."

We're about to take off from Cedar Rapids so an Obama campaign statement will have to wait. But here's what Mr. Obama had to say earlier about Clinton campaign attacks on him:

"I think that folks from some of the other campaigns are reading the polls and starting to get stressed and issuing a whole range of outlandish accusations," he said at a Des Moines news conference.

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

Um.... they would still have to be untrue to be "outlandish", eh?

Even in the "new" politics of "change"?

Just sayin'.

Posted by Corky at 2007-12-02 08:39 PM | Reply | Flag:

So many aspects of the campaign are hidden from view and make analyzing the situation quite complicated since there is so much hidden activity.

The demographics of supporters are interesting. I just culled this material from an article addressing the impact of Ms Winfrey's support for Mr. Obama:

Ms. Winfrey is adored by millions of women who might just as easily support Mrs. Clinton. In fact, if they voted in the 1990s, they probably voted for Mr. Clinton.

Of Ms. Winfrey's daytime audience of 8.6 million viewers, 75 percent are women. More than half are older than 50, 44 percent make less than $40,000 a year and about 25 percent have no more than a high school diploma, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Many of these viewers fit the profile of a Clinton supporter, which is one reason Ms. Winfrey may be valuable to Mr. Obama.

I'd always wondered what kind of people were drawn to Ms Winfrey. It seems that she has a large group drawn by her charisma, who are ignorant and poor, although the low income scale may be associated with the lack of a high school diploma, which may be due to insufficient intelligence and inability to do the classwork, or other more opportunistic factors.

I suspect that many of these women viewers are usually politically apathetic rather than "Clinton voters," and if her appeal can induce them to vote, Ms Hillary's applecart may be upset.

Does anyone expect the race card to be played? Ever? In the primary? In the general election? Ms Hillary is between a hard place and a rock as she needs to avoid alienating the black vote, which circumstance could redound to herdetriment in the general election, even if it enabled her to win the primary from Mr. Obama. But she has had the race card played for her by a black politician, which may be one way to avoid alienating that constituency, since he indicated that they need a winner, and it is in their best interest to choose Ms Hillary as Mr. Obama cannot win a general election.

We will have quite a run of not fully scripted entertainment.

Posted by Johnson at 2007-12-02 11:26 PM | Reply | Flag:

Johnson-
re: "I'd always wondered what kind of people were drawn to Ms Winfrey. It seems that she has a large group drawn by her charisma, who are ignorant and poor, although the low income scale may be associated with the lack of a high school diploma, which may be due to insufficient intelligence and inability to do the classwork, or other more opportunistic factors....Does anyone expect the race card to be played?"

I simply can't imagine that some idiot might "play" the "race card".

Posted by Cooper at 2007-12-02 11:29 PM | Reply | Flag: