We’ve heard a lot about  Obama’s fundraising coup, but little has been said about the big money donors who are feeding his coffers.

The record-shattering $150 million in donations that Sen. Barack Obama raised in September represents only part of the financial advantage the Democratic nominee has amassed entering the final weeks of the presidential contest, newly released campaign finance records show.

There are always ways around the $2300 limit imposed on donors.

The Committee for Change, created in mid-July, has become a vehicle for ultra-rich Democratic donors to distinguish themselves from the 3.1 million others who have put $600 million behind Obama’s presidential candidacy.

“We kept running into donors who had maxed out to Obama Victory who wanted to do additional money and had the capacity to do it and were eager to do it,” said Alan Kessler, a Philadelphia lawyer who recently held a fundraiser for the committee. “They asked if there were vehicles and other ways to do it, and we said yes.”

Many Obama supporters as well as the Obama campaign have bragged about how his money comes from just the regular folks….they claim that the majority of his campaign and it’s financing is just grass roots Joes giving $5, $10, $15, $20 at a time.  Not so.

Lost in the attention given to Obama’s Internet surge is that only a quarter of the $600 million he has raised has come from donors who made contributions of $200 or less, according to a review of his FEC reports. That is actually slightly less, as a percentage, than President Bush raised in small donations during his 2004 race, although Obama has pulled from a far larger number of donors. In 2004, the Bush campaign claimed more than 2 million donors, while the Obama campaign claims to have collected its total from more than 3.1 million individuals.

There’s nothing new and surprising here.  Once again the rich, powerful and famous are behind the huge sums of money Obama has raised:

The best-known of those committees, the Obama Victory Fund, has catered to party regulars who attended one of dozens of gala events around the country, including VIP gatherings for those able to donate $28,500. The Committee for Change has quietly accepted millions more, in checks ranging from $5,000 to $66,900, from celebrities, corporate titans, Native American tribes and several of Obama’s most ardent bundlers.

They include entertainment mogul David Geffen, Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, actress Annette Bening, the California-based Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and members of Chicago’s Crown family.

Nobody can honestly deny the impressive fund raising ability of the Obama campaign, but is that really what we want?  The best president money can buy?  Are fundraising abilities really a foremost qualification for president?

“By both raising the most money and donating to every committee, they become double big players,” said Fred Wertheimer, a campaign finance advocate who helped lead the effort to rid politics of soft-money donors, who were allowed to give unlimited amounts. “This has become the newest form of problem money.”

Obama supported campaign finance reform, and stated he would discuss with McCain taking public campaign financing, yet Obama has now become a participant in receiving what is termed the “newest form of problem money.”

Complete Article

This is awesome.

For the last couple of weeks, wing-tards of all colors…wait, haha, there’s only one color of wingnut and it’s Stupid White…oh wait, there’s a Anchor Baby…anyway, paint colors…

Okay!  So for the last couple of weeks, wing-tards of all kinds have been working their paws and other appendages into a frenzy over the completely mythic concept of voter fraud, something which Republicans always say is widespread, but yet can never prove.  (Because it almost never happens.)  They’ve been railing against their new scapegoat, ACORN, a group none of them had ever heard of before last month, and they still don’t really know what ACORN does anyway.  It’s just this year’s new-and-improved Republican campaign to get black people to stay at home on election day.  Republicans have admitted before that they don’t want the whole population enfranchised, because they know that if all eligible voters vote, they lose.  So, in reading this article, I was thrilled to see this:

On Monday, Obama’s communication’s shop is expected to go on the offense on issues of voter protection after a week in which Republicans cried foul about registration efforts in various states and painted the community organizing group ACORN as a criminal enterprise.

Obama aides will attack Republicans over efforts to disenfranchise voters in several states, and announce a voter protection campaign involving hundreds of volunteer lawyers around the country.

So awesome.  One thing that has impressed me about Obama’s campaign is that they have studied past Republican attack tactics with a fine-toothed comb, and they’re not naive about the depths that Republicans will sink to to keep people from voting.  So that’s very cool.

Also, it seems they’ve hit a new record in fundraising for September, but they’re mum about how much:

One official close to the campaign said that September’s fundraising haul set a new record, surpassing the $66 million Obama raised in August. Another aide, asked about the campaign’s take, would only describe it: “big.”

Also?

Moreover, the assault that John McCain has launched against Obama’s character – including repeated criticisms of the Illinois Democrat’s association to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers – has largely backfired. Obama sources shared internal campaign polling figures that show a sharp fall in positive feelings for the Republican ticket. Following the most recent spat of negative ads, they say, McCain’s unfavorable rating has gone over 50 percent, notably higher than anything detected in recent public polling.

Gov. Sarah Palin is faring just as poorly if not worse. In New Hampshire, an official with knowledge of internal polling says the Alaska Republican’s favorable rating has nosedived to 36 percent, with 56 percent viewing her unfavorably.

Ha ha ha, because negativity and lies may work with wingnuts, but they don’t work with regular people.

Yay.

Late last week, the Obama campaign revealed that they raised $32 million over the course of January, shattering the previous record for fundraising in a single month.  I waited on posting this amazing feat until the Clinton campaign disclosed how much they had raised during the same period.  Well, today we found out that the Clinton campaign raised a disappointing $13.5 million in January..  That’s still a lot of money, but not even half of what her biggest opponent raised.

Just goes to show you what good merch will get you.

Candidates Blitz States as Big Day Looms – [New York Times]