News Bites: Hillary Clinton relied on old money. New money won this primary season.
‘œGod bless the America we are trying to create.’ ‘“ Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Clinton hasn’t officially bowed out of the presidential race, but yesterday was still a sad evening in our household. The Hillary sign came down in our front yard. I figured the neighbors might smirk if we immediately erected an Obama sign, but I wasn’t quite prepared to make the street smile with a new placard. We’ll eventually get his name out there.
In the meantime, I’m reflecting on what went wrong and early on in the race, a lot of it had to do with money. A month ago, TIME magazine indicated she had made five crucial mistakes. One happened to be that she relied on old money:
For a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill’s old donors had re-upped for Hillary’s bid’¦ But something had happened to fund raising that Team Clinton didn’t fully grasp: the Internet.
Though Clinton’s totals from working the shrimp-cocktail circuit remained impressive by every historic measure, her donors were typically big-check writers. And once they had ponied up the $2,300 allowed by law, they were forbidden to give more. The once bottomless Clinton well was drying up.
Obama relied instead on a different model: the 800,000-plus people who had signed up on his website and could continue sending money his way $5, $10 and $50 at a time. (The campaign has raised more than $100 million online, better than half its total.) Meanwhile, the Clintons were forced to tap the $100 million ‘” plus the fortune they had acquired since he left the White House ‘” first for $5 million in January to make it to Super Tuesday and then $6.4 million to get her through Indiana and North Carolina.
Andrew Tobias echoed the same sentiment. As treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, he’s the DNC’s highest-ranking openly gay official, I asked him if he saw money doing anything good when it came to the political process. His answer:
Sure. Politics is tacky and all the awful things it is ‘” but you can’t have democracy without politics, and politics requires money. That said, it’s wonderful how the balance of power is shifting away from the $500,000 and $5 million contributions (now illegal) ‘” and even the $28,500 contributions (the current annual max to a federal political party like the DNC) ‘” to the potential for millions of $10 and $25 and $100 and $250 contributions over the Internet.
Until Hillary, I had never given money to a political candidate. So a couple of months ago Jeanine and I gave individually over the Internet after being prompted by a friend forwarding the pleas from HillaryClinton.com. After we gave, the real benefit was that we received daily emails from (wink, wink) Hillary. I actually looked forward to this communication because it was a message direct from her campaign that hadn’t been filtered and recounted by the pundits. For my 100 bucks I felt like I was in the know. It made me feel a part of something.
Obviously, Barack Obama figured this out sooner than the Hillary camp. I have to give his people credit. ‘œChange we can believe in.’ He did it with a little more than pocket change. $5, $10 and 20 bucks a pop.
So what about you? Did you give? If so, how much? And what prompted you to click the ‘œContribute’ button?
I’ve been giving to political campaigns since my early 20s. Not usually large dollar figures, but probably $100-$500 per election cycle.
This year, I contributed to the Obama campaign twice, for a total of $350. I found him inspirational and I believe that he has a better chance of defeating McCain than Clinton did.
I’ll probably do one more contribution to him for the general election, and a handful of smaller contributions to state or local candidates.
I like EMILY’s List and the Victory Fund as sources for identifying good candidates around the country, who have a good shot at winning if they can raise enough money.
I’d never donated to a campaign before, but I donated to Hillary Clinton this year. A little under $300 all together over the length of the campaign.
Liza and Liz: You both made me feel a little guilty for only giving $100. Perhaps I need to up my giving over the next several months. Go Obama-Clinton!
Hi Nina,
It probably was too much to send, but I really wanted her to succeed and I was so inspired, you know?
Also, I was able to send what I did because, for example, I sent a chunk from my tax return, and then smaller donations right when I got paid. Skipped a monthly dinner out or put off buying something, sent the donation instead, stuff like that.
Another bigger chunk came because I thought my MRI was going to be a $100 copay, and then it wasn’t but I’d already subtracted the money from my checkbook. So I sent it to Hillary – it was already earmarked for healthcare, after all. 🙂
I’m a college student and gave my first donation (a measly $25) to Obama. it isn’t much but i wasn’t working and it was what I could afford. I’m obviously happy that Obama won the nomination but I would have supported Hillary just as much if she had won the nomination. Right now, I’m focused on defeating the california marriage amendment and have given to that. I grew up in a family that was very liberal but still went to church. they believed in tithing (secular and religious) and I try to donate 10% of what I make to LGBT and progressive political groups.
Nina, this has been my criticism of the LGBTQ movement for a while. A lot of organizations are going after the big-money gays and overlooking our community members who can only afford to give $5 here and $10 there. I think if nothing else, Obama has proven that we need to rethink our model of fundraising.
Bryan: With your history, you might enjoy the series that Aundi did on God and Money that included a couple of posts on the concept of tithing.
Serena: Good point… the LGBT organizations that benefit from version 2.0 of this will be the ones that figure out how to blend fundraising with social networking.