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Small donors don’t cut it for many Democratic candidates. Back to the rich

Surrealistik

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They tried, most failed: Democrats find small donors aren'''t enough - Los Angeles Times

The LA Times said:
After all the promises that fundraising-as-usual was behind them and that charming the wealthy over canapes would take a backseat to chatting with regular human beings, Democratic presidential candidates spent a lot of time this summer in the Hamptons. Martha’s Vineyard, Brentwood, and the well-manicured estates of Silicon Valley, too.

Paying the bills without paying regular visits to the seaside homes and penthouse apartments of rainmakers turns out to be a lot harder than many candidates hoped.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has twice funded robust presidential campaigns almost exclusively with small online contributions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has largely succeeded, as well. The others, not so much.

“A lot of them had a big burst of online fundraising at the beginning and thought they were going to be able to keep it going,” said Joe Trippi, who managed the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean, an early phenom at grass-roots fundraising. “They hired beyond their ability to sustain it. Several had to pull back.”

I'm not at all surprised. Kamala Harris, Booker, Beto and the rest who initially repudiated big donor money simply don't have the receipts and history that would presage consistency on the matter, and as they flip flopped on policy and failed to inspire, their change oriented small donor base evaporated and eroded, leaving them dependent on the well-heeled who have, for obvious reasons, little interest in such things as Medicare for All and other iconic progressive ideas. Since they declared as much, I figured these early commitments to progressivism and the eschewing large benefactors would not hold, and I'm sorry to have been proven right. Likewise, it seems that their polling and popularity have eroded in tandem.
 
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Yeah... I could've told you that this was going to happen.

Not even Bernie was immune to this fact back in 2016.
 
Yeah... I could've told you that this was going to happen.

Not even Bernie was immune to this fact back in 2016.

Which big donors did Bernie solicit?
 
Ron Paul managed to secure a lot of money via small donors.


Maybe the problem isn't us. Maybe the problem is them, and their message.

Just a thought.
 
Which big donors did Bernie solicit?

Solicitation would be hard to actually prove. Because pack's being such a big thing now, and the fact that actual companies are forbidden by law to donating from candidates. It can make such things a hassle.

Though I do know that he got several large pack donations from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. Not to mention Bernie had his usual shtick of garnering donation through his debate performances.
 
Ron Paul managed to secure a lot of money via small donors.


Maybe the problem isn't us. Maybe the problem is them, and their message.

Just a thought.
Ron Paul managed to secure a lot of money via small donors.

Yes, the guy who went nowhere?
 
Solicitation would be hard to actually prove. Because pack's being such a big thing now, and the fact that actual companies are forbidden by law to donating from candidates. It can make such things a hassle.

Though I do know that he got several large pack donations from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. Not to mention Bernie had his usual shtick of garnering donation through his debate performances.

Sanders repudiated and never accepted/encouraged PAC/Super PAC support.

Moreover cumulative individual donations from employees don't generally hint at notable and concerted corporate influence barring bundling efforts, sourcing from upper management, and maximum individual donations; if for example 5000 Microsoft employees donated $20 each, the hefty cumulative total of $100,000 doesn't really imply untoward influence; what that tells me rather, is that a bunch of people at Microsoft, people probably not at the upper echelons of management, like his ideas. If however that same amount were comprised of the individual election maximum of $2800, thus deriving from about 36 donors, that would be significantly more concerning, particularly if they did explicitly come from management.

Personally I was unable to find evidence that the donation composition derived from bundling, upper management or maximal donations; if you know of such, I would be interested in seeing it.
 
Sanders repudiated and never accepted/encouraged PAC/Super PAC support.

Moreover cumulative individual donations from employees don't generally hint at notable and concerted corporate influence barring bundling efforts, sourcing from upper management, and maximum individual donations; if for example 5000 Microsoft employees donated $20 each, the hefty cumulative total of $100,000 doesn't really imply untoward influence; what that tells me rather, is that a bunch of people at Microsoft, people probably not at the upper echelons of management, like his ideas. If however that same amount were comprised of the individual election maximum of $2800, thus deriving from about 36 donors, that would be significantly more concerning, particularly if they did explicitly come from management.

Personally I was unable to find evidence that the donation composition derived from bundling, upper management or maximal donations; if you know of such, I would be interested in seeing it.

Aside from organizations that fold information from packs, there aren't many that would readily display such information.
I know a few, and checked them to get some answers. However the data ends up to his last debate.

He got upwards of 1.8m after his fist debate, along with donations from over a dozen companies. One such site I stopped using was Opensecrets.
Top Contributors, federal election data for Bernie Sanders, 2016 cycle • OpenSecrets
Though I think this information isn't up to date on what was actually being donated.
 
Sanders repudiated and never accepted/encouraged PAC/Super PAC support.

Moreover cumulative individual donations from employees don't generally hint at notable and concerted corporate influence barring bundling efforts, sourcing from upper management, and maximum individual donations; if for example 5000 Microsoft employees donated $20 each, the hefty cumulative total of $100,000 doesn't really imply untoward influence; what that tells me rather, is that a bunch of people at Microsoft, people probably not at the upper echelons of management, like his ideas. If however that same amount were comprised of the individual election maximum of $2800, thus deriving from about 36 donors, that would be significantly more concerning, particularly if they did explicitly come from management.

Personally I was unable to find evidence that the donation composition derived from bundling, upper management or maximal donations; if you know of such, I would be interested in seeing it.

I wouldn't hold your breath on that one...
 
Important thread.
 
"Small donors don’t cut it for many Democratic candidates"

They only need to "cut it" for ONE candidate, the one that raises the most money.
That can be from small donors, larger donors or some combination of the two but it is certainly possible to raise money without big corporate PAC donations.

Besides, in the end, what are we really arguing about? I say that utimately the goal we're arguing about is the eventual dismantling of the big donor system altogether, and since there is no way Republicans would ever go for that, it comes down to Democrats to try, and in order for them to try, they first have to WIN.

So I suggest revisiting the subject of campaign finance later on if the Democrats win convincingly in the POTUS and in both sides of Congress.
Then we will see if reforming campaign finance is really going to ever happen.

If it doesn't, cover my face with egg.
 
They only need to "cut it" for ONE candidate, the one that raises the most money.
That can be from small donors, larger donors or some combination of the two but it is certainly possible to raise money without big corporate PAC donations.

Besides, in the end, what are we really arguing about? I say that utimately the goal we're arguing about is the eventual dismantling of the big donor system altogether, and since there is no way Republicans would ever go for that, it comes down to Democrats to try, and in order for them to try, they first have to WIN.

So I suggest revisiting the subject of campaign finance later on if the Democrats win convincingly in the POTUS and in both sides of Congress.
Then we will see if reforming campaign finance is really going to ever happen.

If it doesn't, cover my face with egg.

Problem is that most Democrats are just as corrupt on the campaign finance issue, and you certainly can't rely on those taking big donor cash to reform the system that benefits them; people like Biden have exactly zero interest in doing anything with respect to reform, and to be honest, I suspect the same is likely ultimately true of all the Dem candidates except for Bernie and Warren.

Further, even big donors make me uncomfortable for good reason if they stem from sources like the upper management of corporations, and if they're bundled, they may as well be corporate PAC money/support.
 
Yes, the guy who went nowhere?

Ron Paul cost George Bush the election basically. he sucked up enough independent votes.
which is what he was there to do.
 
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