The Power Behind Obama’s Fundraising Success
Although Barack Obama often brags that his fundraising success is made possible by small donors, who never donated money to a political campaign before, the truth is more nuanced: only 45% of received donations were $200 or less. 55% of the donations were more than that. In other words; it are not (just) small donors who are behind Obama’s financial success.
No, what’s truly behind Obama’s remarkable success is the donor network of the Democratic Party. They’ve worked on improving this network for years. They were, for a long time, well behind the Republican Party in this regard. The main donors of Obama are not small donors, no, they’re employees of America’s biggest and most important businesses:
As in other recent campaigns, lawyers account for the biggest chunk of Democratic donations. They have donated about $18 million to Obama, compared with about $5 million to John McCain, according to data released on June 2 and available at OpenSecrets.org.
People who work at securities and investment companies have given Obama about $8 million, compared with $4.5 for McCain. People who work in communications and electronics have given Obama about $10 million, compared with $2 million for McCain. Professors and other people who work in education have given Obama roughly $7 million, compared with $700,000 for McCain.
Real estate professionals have given Obama $5 million, compared with $4 million for McCain. Medical professionals have given Obama $7 million, compared with $3 million for McCain. Commercial bankers have given Obama $1.6 million, compared with $1.2 million for McCain. Hedge fund and private equity managers have given Obama about $1.6 million, compared with $850,000 for McCain.
When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.
So, Brooks rightfully claims, the real core of his fundraising success aren’t small donors, no, they are ‘the rising class of information age analysts. Once, the wealthy were solidly Republican. But the information age rewards education with money. There are many smart high achievers who grew up in liberal suburbs around San Francisco, L.A. and New York, went to left-leaning universities like Harvard and Berkeley and took their values with them when they became investment bankers, doctors and litigators.’
Analysts even distinguish managers from professionals these days. Professionals give to and vote for Democrats. Managers, on the other hand, are Republicans. Since there are more professionals than managers out there, the Democrats have the advantage.
What’s also interesting in this regard is that rising sectors prefer Democrats, while declining sectors prefer Republicans.
Brooks goes on to explain that the donor network of the Democratic Party has made use of the internal war between America’s two classes of rich people: the highly educated coastal rich and the inland corporate rich. The two have been at war with each other for years. This is a war over ‘values, leadership styles and social networks.’
And the Democrats have used the war to their advantage. They’ve learned how to get the support of one of America’s elite groups. The one that’s one the rise. This while Republicans are still dependent on the elite that are on the decline, or at least not growing as fast as the ‘other’ group.
The result, according to Brooks at least? Once Democrats are in power, you can forget about all those nice economic plans. In order to implement them, the Democrats will need to tax the rich dramatically. This while the rich are now an important base. These rich people are supporting the Democratic Party because they are socially liberal, not necessarily because they believe that the government should be able to take half of their income.
When in power these people will not allow big tax increases.
he hasn’t had access to the DNC’s list that Dean’s worked on developing for the past roughly 4 years. He will once he’s given the nomination though. It’s not exactly a stretch of imagination to think that a person who registered "D" would show up on multiple lists.
And not quite the same list that ole Bill wanted to abuse Federal resources for.
Two questions. First, do you know of a place to go an get the raw data on his disclosed donations? It would be interesting to look at the full distribution of the donations side by side for the two candidates, and stats like donation per capita.
Also, does this theory of financially successful backers make you more hopeful about the future financial policies of the left? Presumably these educated folks should know enough to by against large deficits as well, or do you think the irrationality of trying to get something for free will win over?
Indeed, Factcheck.org is all over Obama’s lies about his fundraising and McCain’s. I made a lil post about it here - http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/factcheckorg-obama-is-lying-about-mccains-money-and-his-own/
Well, I’ve looked up a bit, mostly just the stuff on OpenSecrets.org. The more full nuanced truth is that Obama recieved 45% of his money from contributions under $200 and 28% from donors giving the maximum of $2,300. McCain is basically the inverse, with 24% and 46% respectively.
For a little historical context: in 2004 Kerry was 31%/35%, Bush was 32/49, and Nader was 50/24. I couldn’t find stats on the 2000 elections or earlier.
So, while it is certainly wrong to say that his campaign is funded mostly by small donars, it is accurate to say that the Obama campaign has achieved a level of grass-roots support that is more indicative of underdog third party fundraising than seen in recent history for a major party candidate.
Kevin and Chuck; later today a follow-up will be published.