Someone should remind Bernie that it takes money to run a presidential campaign. We're just in

[politicaljunkie41910]

the primaries. Whomever is the Democratic nominee is going to have a wave of campaign ads thrown their way and they won't be paid for with $27 donations. Which is why I don't get bent out of shape by the fact that Clinton took large sums of money for speeches. She knows from experience that presidential campaigns don't come cheap. Maybe Bernie being from a small state like Vermont, which is next door to a small state like New Hampshire, is the actual Bubble Boy. Campaigns have to travel. They have to rent office space and equipment, and they have to pay for campaign ads to get their message out and to correct misleading information. I don't like that SCOTUS has made it possible for PACs to dump unlimited amounts of money from people like the Koch Bros and that rich guy from Vegas who all the GOP flocks to in order to kiss his ring.

Hillary would have been committing political malpractice if she wasn't out there raising money for her campaign, or she ran out of of money towards the end of the campaign. Many campaigns end up with huge debt that takes them years to pay off.

For the record, a lot of groups looking for speakers, are doing so for big affairs they put on. Some of these events are annual events and used by organizations for their own annual fundraising and they charge high prices for their tickets. They need someone who has some prestige to charge those high ticket prices and to ensure attendance. I know because I've been on that side when I was trying to raise funds for my kid's catholic schools for fundraising for athletic equipment or resurfacing the track, or building a new building to replace the old trailers used for classrooms, and when I was in college, speakers for commencements. You're competing with lots of other civic organizations and those people charge money for travel and their time. Yes, Hillary could have charged a lot less, but you know what, word gets around. If Hillary spoke at a small group's fundraiser, or commencement, everyone would be knocking on her door to speak at theirs. Somehow, when a person of Hillary's stature said her fee is $300,000 you decide that you'd better take a second look at that Manager at Costco, who once played quarterback at UCLA.

[madfloridian]

1. The 3 million he got within hours after the Iowa Caucus will help.

Most of his donors are far from tapped out and he can go back to them many times.

[99th_Monkey]

6. Thank you. Now I don't have to say it. n/t

[roguevalley]

23. he out raised her in jan

[demwing]

8. I still have plenty of room in my Bernie Buckett

think I'll feed that bucket tonight in honor of this thread!

[politicaljunkie41910]

17. So how are Bernie supporters different from the bankers. Everyone wants something from

their politicians. The bankers want influence. Bernie's supporters want a Free college education, Free health care for life, and a doubling of their Social Security benefits. If you want to impress me, tell me that Bernie's contributors just want to get the money out of politics. All money. Everyone agree to accept the government funding of presidential campaigns and that's it. No promises of FREE stuff. Hillary could easily match Bernie's rhetoric of Free Stuff, but she knows that this nation cannot pay the bills that we have, and do everything that Bernie is promising; ie. fix the nation's crumbling infrastructure, not just save Social Security but double the benefit pay out, free college, free healthcare for life, three months free maternity leave and paternity leave.

[Lucinda]

20. The Reps have spent 80 million in ad buys in NH alone - just for the primaries. 6 Million more

that Bernie had raised in total as of January 31st.
He is going to need a lot more money.

[RobertEarl]

2. Nice try

But so far in the center that it's useless. A revolution is what this country needs, not more of the same.

Oh, Bernie raised more $ than H last month.

[a kennedy]

7. and about that revolution.....I thought Barak was the previous leader for us....

had some trouble, BUT DID GET THINGS DONE, but.....Bernie IS THE LEADER NOW. I'm still giving my 10.00 a month.

[retrowire]

3. ...

Bernie raised over 3.5 million in one night from us donors. 4 out of every 10 of us donors becomes a recurring donor as well.

Financially, Bernie is fine.

Of course Hillary should raise money. But she doesn't have to raise it from them.

[Le Taz Hot]

4. ROFLMAO!!

Oh, wait. You were serious.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

10. Everybody does it! is all they've got to defend her with.

Apparently their moms never told them 'If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?'

But it's the standard go to.

Accepting giant speaking fees from financial titans? Everybody does it.

Keep sensitive emails on private servers? Everybody does it.

Vote for death and destruction of brown people? Everybody does it.

and on and on and on. It's all perfectly acceptable for Hill cause she can point to other people doing the same things. Mostly Repubs, but hey, 'everybody does it'. And if they don't yet, they'll have to start doing it to be 'serious'.

[politicaljunkie41910]

22. I notice lots of Bernie's supporters have posts in the thousands. When do you have time to work.

I guess that's why all that free stuff looks so inviting.

For the record, I have been coming to this board for more than 10 years. I used to come here to see what the topics of the day were. I only registered to post a few years ago. But I still would have to spend a disproportionate number of the hours in a day to rack up thousands and thousands of posts. So before you ridicule me, take a look at how you spend your days being snarky with people you know nothing about. I guess it's the highlight of your day.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

25. Ah, the good old right wing 'free stuff' attack!

Just keep telling yourself you're a 'Democrat'.

[LiberalArkie]

26. Work? What is that? I am 68 and a lot of the Bernie supporters I know have been laid off.

[HerbChestnut]

5. If Bernie wins the nomination

He'll have beaten an opponent whose SuperPAC just brought in $15million this month alone and has billionaire donors shoveling money into her campaign. He'll have beaten an opponent who has the support of virtually all of the establishment including politicians and media and has near universal name recognition while he started at 3% in the polls. He'll have beaten all of that despite the fact that the average donation to his campaign is $27. Don't tell me, him, or anyone else that he can't beat a Republican in November.

[99th_Monkey]

9. Someone should remind you it takes millions & millions of people for a political revolution

THIS ^ is what is happening, like it or not. And each and every one of these millions of people can
give up to $2700, which is exactly 1/100th of the current average donation.

You can do the math. Bernie's potential campaign coffers are YUUUGE I tell you. And he's just
getting started. By the time of the GE, his donor base will be many more millions on top of that.

This is what real revolutions DO.. they make history instead of slavishly repeating it.

[Matariki]

11. Ask Jeb! how that's working out

[HooptieWagon]

13. Or Scott Walker.

[JessL]

16. God I love bright people.

Thanks Matariki!

[winter is coming]

27. Let's just say his exclamation point is looking more like an underscore. n/t

[demwing]

12. You're right. Bernie can't do this with $27 donations

Time we upped that number to $50.

Good call!

[HooptieWagon]

15. I'm already in for a hundred.

But you're right, time to start working on the second.

[Matariki]

19. lol

I've been doing regular $50 donations. Time to up my game!

[Hoyt]

18. Sanders was busy this morning at a breakfast hosted by Bank America.

[Jarqui]

21. "Clinton took large sums of money for speeches"

She did. But the speeches that were listed showed her take was $10.5 mil/yr - not for the campaign and not for the Clinton Foundation.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/06/09/hillary_clinton_we_came_out_of_the_white_house_dead_broke.html

DIANE SAWYER, ABC NEWS: It has been reported you've made $5 million making speeches, the president's made more than $100 million.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, if you -- you have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education, you know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard and it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard, first of all, we had to pay off all our debts which was, you know, we had to make double the money because of obviously taxes, and pay you have at debts, and get us houses and take care of family members.

SAWYER: But do you think Americans will understand five times the median income in this country for one speech?

CLINTON: Well, let me put it this way, I thought making speeches for money was a much better thing than getting connected with any one group or company as so many people who leave public life do.

So Hillary and Bill were in the hole according to her in 2000.

Their combined net worth now roughly $111,000,000
http://moneynation.com/hillary-clinton-net-worth/
- largely from speeches

Bernie Sanders net worth $528,014
http://moneynation.com/bernie-sanders-net-worth/

Clinton Foundation had $283 million in assets end of 2014 fiscal year

And she's raised over $100 million for her campaign - mostly from big donors.

[Gregorian]

24. It's a legit question, but I think there's quite a lot more where that came from.

It's an experiment. We'll find out.