One wonders if the upcoming Rezko trial and its potential impact on Obama’s Teflon-coated campaign isn’t the driving force behind all the babble about “change”, “healing souls”, etc.
Put another way, is Obama motivated by a guilty conscience, or is his campaign really proof that innocents can triumph in a land of political wolves?
For example, there have been a lot of numerical manipulations around the proportion of the Obama campaign that has been funded from small contributors.
People have practically been standing on their heads, slicing the numbers to the point of absurdity, to prove that Barack Obama isn’t in the pockets of the rich because “most”/”the majority”/”all” (see the Washington Post, huffingtonpost.com, etc.) of his donations have been in small amounts.
The reality is that only about 1/3 of Obama’s total contributions have come from small donors, those in the $200 and under category.
This info is readily available from the FEC, which has posted totals through January 31 for all of the candidates.
This is not to say that either the Clinton or McCain campaigns are exemplary in this regard (15.5% and 24.8%, respectively). The difference is that they haven’t made this statistic a litmus test for ideological purity.
In fact, no one has done as well as Ron Paul in the area of attracting donations from the hoi polloi: over 62% of Paul’s coffers came from people contributing $200 or less.
Clinton
$200 and Under $18,660,346 15.54%
$200.01 – $499 $4,876,808 4.06%
$500 – $999 $6,790,257 5.66%
$1000 – $1999 $20,013,590 16.67%
$2000 and Over $69,717,042 58.07%
Obama
$200 and Under $47,323,742 33.85%
$200.01 – $499 $10,452,546 7.48%
$500 – $999 $11,440,957 8.18%
$1000 – $1999 $21,130,641 15.11%
$2000 and Over $49,472,185 35.38%
McCain
$200 and Under $12,255,455 24.78%
$200.01 – $499 $2,595,721 5.25%
$500 – $999 $4,292,476 8.68%
$1000 – $1999 $8,648,735 17.49%
$2000 and Over $21,657,862 43.80%
Paul
$200 and Under $20,480,336 62.89%
$200.01 – $499 $2,456,663 7.54%
$500 – $999 $3,482,780 10.69%
$1000 – $1999 $3,164,245 9.72%
$2000 and Over $2,981,117 9.15%