Obama campaign taps wealthy for big bucks

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

"We did this from the bottom up," Barack Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, said in a new video touting the President's fundraising success. Messina and other Democrats are peddling the line that Obama's massive $86 million haul last quarter resulted from mobs of regular Americans cutting small checks. In truth, Obama's campaign is like every other presidential campaign -- mostly funded by wealthy individuals and special interests, many of whom profit from the president's policies.
The Obama campaign on Wednesday gave us bare-bones second-quarter 2011 numbers for Obama for America (the actual re-election campaign, which raised $47 million) and for the Democratic National Committee (essentially an arm of the campaign, which raised $38 million.) But they're not making their actual campaign filing public until the Federal Election Commission deadline late Friday. This timing allows the campaign to control the message by releasing numbers it likes (like "98 percent of all donations that came in were $250 or less) while not giving critics any ammunition -- such as who the big donors were and how much they gave.

Even without OFA's donor list, we can get a good idea of the Obama campaign's real financing picture by looking at the monthly reports the DNC has filed already this year. Again, the DNC is little more than an arm of the Obama campaign -- Obama's high-dollar fundraisers around the country mostly benefit the DNC. Combing through the data gives you a very different picture than the one Messina paints.

Of the $31.1 million the DNC has raised in contributions this year, almost two-thirds -- $19.3 million -- has come from individuals giving $10,000 or more, according to my analysis of FEC data. So, judging by all available data, rich people cutting big checks are providing an overwhelming majority of Obama's re-election money.