Home > "Liberal" Media, Election 2008 > Bits & Pieces, April 5, 2008

Bits & Pieces, April 5, 2008

April 5th, 2008

Final exams have finished this semester, but I still have quite a lot of grading left to do by Monday. Didn’t get much done today because of a doctor’s appointment and a school event–a local fair where the college could put up a table and try to sign people up for our evening classes. It was free for us because we advertise in the local newsletter, and we got about a dozen bites and maybe a chance at better publicity for the school after talking to a local filming team. But I was tasked to put together a 5-minute movie showcasing the school, and that took up all of yesterday evening and night. So tomorrow and Monday will be mostly for getting those grades done. After that, there are various events, but I’ll have much of the month off.

That said, let’s look at some bits & pieces from today’s political news.


Clinton finally released her tax records, and with them revealed the reason she’s likely been reluctant to have them out there: the Clintons have gotten stinking rich since leaving the White House. $109 million in eight years. Makes it a bit harder to make blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania believe that you feel their pain. And the tax records are not even complete–they filed for an extension for 2007, so much of what happened in that year will likely remain a mystery.

The papers mention that the Clintons gave more than the Obamas to charity as a percent of their overall income, but it’s a lot easier to give 9.5% of $14 million per year and enjoy the remaining $12 million-plus, than it is to give the same from an income of half a million per year while you’re still paying off massive college loans. The Clinton’s $109 million makes the Obama’s $3.9 million seem paltry in comparison.


Another thing that could give Clinton a harder time in Pennsylvania: Mark Penn, her chief campaign strategist, has been lobbying for the Columbians to get them a trade deal Clinton says she opposes. Penn called it an “error in judgment,” an was successfully able to spin the story to prominently mention that Hillary opposes what he was trying to lobby for.

Remember, Obama got slammed in the media for a good week or so when a low-level advisor was characterized in notes taken by a conservative foreign government as saying that Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric on the trail should not be taken so seriously. This was successfully spun by Clinton and the media to mean “Obama lied on NAFTA and will screw all you hard-workng Ohioans.” This despite the fact that the context of the whole memo more or less followed exactly what Obama had been promising publicly and indicated no contradiction–and then there was the fact that Hillary was the first one reported by Canadians as saying she was not really against NAFTA.

And let’s not forget what Hillary said back then:

I would ask you to look at this story and substitute my name for Sen. Obama’s name and see what you would do with this story… Just ask yourself [what you would do] if some of my advisers had been having private meetings with foreign governments.

Um… yeah, what would we do, Hillary?

However, Clinton seems to be getting yet another break in the media (they don’t want her campaign to die, it would be less interesting and would not sell as many ads that way), as her chief advisor, a major player in her campaign, lobbies for a trade deal beneficial to a foreign government–and the MSM barely pays notice. This should be twice the embarrassment for Clinton that the Canadian thing was for Obama, but so far, not much is being said that’s going to hurt her too much. Most stories bear headlines that stress Penn’s “apology” and Clinton’s opposition to such a deal. Strange Obama did not get the same break when something far less troubling happened to him before a big blue-collar primary.

Not that this will help Clinton in Pennsylvania, of course.


More and more, it seems like Clinton supporters are catching on to the fact that Hillary’s chances of winning are close to zero, and that her campaign style is killing Democratic chances in the general election. More and more Democrats are edging away from her campaign, some even calling outright for fellow Clinton supporters to get behind Obama and show a unified front. Meanwhile, Obama is steadily chipping away at Clinton’s once-formidable 20-point lead in Pennsylvania; most polls have Obama behind by only single digits, a few have him almost in a statistical dead heat, and one even puts Obama ahead in the Keystone state.

Already Obama is seeing more support–Jimmy Carter, for example, left little doubt that he will pledge his superdelegate vote for Obama. And Hillary is starting to hurt even more in the pocketbook, as she raises less relative to Obama than before, and is said to be in serious debt while Obama’s coffers overflow.

If Obama even comes within a few points in Pennsylvania, Clinton’s support will probably begin to collapse–and if Obama wins there, more people will probably forego their reticence in calling for Hillary to step down.


McCain, meanwhile, is returning about $3 million in donations, as the media reports that he is “considering” public funding. But this does not mean that he has realized he cannot withdraw from public financing for the primary season and is making sure he stays within the law–no, he’s still in violation of federal law in that regard, and the media is still giving him a gargantuan break on that.

What McCain is doing is returning money donated for the general election period, and he’s returning it with a request to re-donate it to a different fund he’ll use for other purposes. The biggest impact of this news seems to be that McCain is thinking seriously of going the public-finance route for the general election–he seems to think this will be something he can use against Obama, and with the media’s willingness to give McCain a break for his past public-financing legislation, it could even work. Despite the fact that Obama does not take any money from federal lobbyists or PACs, and that the vast majority of his donations are small ones by private persons–the antithesis of campaign finance corruption. Meanwhile, McCain continues to surround himself with swarms of lobbyists, and again, the MSM fails to notice.

McCain has little to lose here, considering that Obama has been out-raising him by something like five-to-one. And Obama could potentially use McCain’s lobbyist swarm and his violation of campaign finance law to blunt McCain’s strategy, while outspending McCain even more than Republicans have outspent Democrats in the past.

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  1. t.c.
    April 7th, 2008 at 07:52 | #1

    “it’s a lot easier to give 9.5% of $14 million per year and enjoy the remaining $12 million-plus, than it is to give the same from an income of half a million per year while you’re still paying off massive college loans. The Clinton’s $109 million makes the Obama’s $3.9 million seem paltry in comparison.”

    Yeah, well someone with an income of 3.9 million doesn’t truly get what middle class people like me go through any more than someone with an income of $109 million. I assure you, anyone who runs for president isn’t living like a blue-collar laborer. And most people who make half-a-mill a year don’t worry about how much longer they can drive their car before replacing it, like I and many other people do.

    Actually – and Saturday Night Live addressed this last night in a funny skit – while the Clintons were earning virtually all their income, the media was right there reporting it. So you would have already known about their earnings, was it really important to you to begin with.

    Plus, I’m almost positive Obama is financially much better off than
    the Clintons were when they were 46. And that Obama will be just as wealthy as they are now when he’s in his 60s, especially if he becomes the president. And whether he wins or not, how much you want to bet his next book deal will be worth?

  2. Luis
    April 7th, 2008 at 09:22 | #2

    t.c.:

    Hrm. When I was writing that, I was a bit edgy and doubtful about it–not the best observation I’ve ever made. But I still stand by the main gist of it. The Obamas were not making most of that money in the first few years, and instead they were a hardworking family paying off big college loans (we’re talking ivy-league-sized loans, not small by any measure), buying a new home, and paying for kids’ private schools–in other words getting themselves established. That they gave something like 4% of their income to charity is not all that shabby.

    Responding to the gist of your post, I was not suggesting that the Obamas are still struggling, nor that they won’t become fantastically rich via book deals and speaking engagements, whether or not Obama wins the nomination. Nor was I comparing the Obamas now with the Clintons of the late 80’s and early 90’s. My point was that the media was highlighting how much the Clintons had given to charity relative to the Obamas, and I was pointing out why the difference exists. To keep with the comparison of the Obamas now and the Clintons before Bill became president, I would counter that they probably gave even less than the Obamas to charity as well. I would also point out that it would appear that the Clintons’ giving was, to a large degree, to their own charity program, but I’d have to do more research to clarify and substantiate that.

    As for observing the Clintons making the money, I do not believe that such exact figures were know, and if you’d asked most Americans, they would never have guessed that the amount was quite that much.

  3. t.c.
    April 7th, 2008 at 11:29 | #3

    “As for observing the Clintons making the money, I do not believe that such exact figures were know, and if you’d asked most Americans, they would never have guessed that the amount was quite that much.”

    Well no, maybe no one knew the EXACT number of their earnings. But we did know about their $25 million book deals and Bill’s speaking fees. I’d think anyone who follows the news would have to figure they earned nearly $100 million. But would you be making the same observation had
    they only received, for example, the book deals and nothing else? And I’m sure even the blue collar Pennsylvanians are aware that the Clinton’s live a more extravagant life-style than they themselves do. No real surprise there.

    Plus, the Clinton’s made most of this money post-presidency. But when they were getting off the ground, they struggled just as the Obama’s did. Bill was very poor and Hillary was middle-class. They’re hardly the Kennedy’s or the Bush’s.

    “Responding to the gist of your post, I was not suggesting that the
    Obamas are still struggling, nor that they won’t become fantastically rich via book deals and speaking engagements, whether or not Obama wins the nomination. Nor was I comparing the Obamas now with the Clintons of the late 80’s and early 90’s. My point was that the media was highlighting how much the Clintons had given to charity relative to the Obamas, and I was pointing out why the difference exists. To keep with the comparison of the Obamas now and the Clintons before Bill became president, I would counter that they probably gave even less than the Obamas to charity as well.”

    I’m sorry, but I don’t go along with that either. Really, is it all
    that difficult to give 10% of $4 million? You’re not saying blue
    collar workers won’t buy the notion that $3.6 million is enough to get by on, are you?

  4. t.c.
    April 7th, 2008 at 11:36 | #4

    And I don’t see why the Clinton’s giving to their own foundation should be an issue. At least they believed in a cause strongly enough to start a foundation in
    order to advance it. Why does this bother people so much? As if
    fighting AIDs in Africa is the wrong thing to do, all of a sudden. Do
    you know how many lives the foundation has saved?

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