Is Hillary Rudy Giuliani or is she John Kerry...?
Hillary Clinton announces she's loaned herself $5 million of "her money" (what, not hers and Bills...???) a-la John Kerry back in 2004, and her senior staff forgoes their paychecks (a-la Rudy) ... then she promptly raises $3 million from online sympathizers (a-la ... Howard Dean...?) Team Obama, meanwhile, does what it does best -- raising more money than Hillary does, ($7.2 million and counting...) which in political terms, is akin to raising more money than God (assuming that God has 50% maxed-out contributors...)
Why it's important:
February is looking to be a good month for Barack Obama, with primaries tailor made for his new kind of politics: in Louisiana, where the Black vote is large and Hurricane Katrina chased away all but the well heeled (both of which form the Obama base,) in the D.C. area primaries (D.C., Maryland and Virginia,) where again, it's heavy on Black voters and upscale voters, including Capitol Hill denizens who likely still hate the Clintons from back in the day, and smaller primaries in Hawaii (Obama's birthplace) and Wisconsin, and caucuses (i.e, in Washington State) that have become Obama's specialty. (Howard Fineman offers more explication here. And I know I keep doing this, but here's the Democratic calendar again, just so you don't have to scroll...):
- February 9: Louisiana, Washington (caucus)
- February 10: Maine (caucus)
- February 12: District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia
- February 19: Hawaii, Wisconsin
- March 4: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont
- March 8: Wyoming
- March 11: Mississippi
- May 6: Indiana, North Carolina
- May 13: Nebraska, West Virginia
- May 20: Kentucky, Oregon
- May 27: Idaho
- June 3: Montana, South Dakota
What Hillary needs is to fundraise like hell, so that she'll be ready to fire when the primaries that favor her come back around: Ohio and Texas in March, and the big one: Philadelphia (with the Rendel machine that's ready to work for her) in April. Like Rudy Giuliani, Hillary will have to withstand nearly a month of "Obama wins!" headlines, if the tea leaves are to be believed (this time) before she gets another Romneyesque "gold." She can't afford to let the money flush Obama campaign run away with all the TV and radio time, AND all the free media, too.
Look for your celeb-laden fundraising emails to about triple over the next 30 days...Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, presidential candidates |
