Anne Kornblut’s New York Times story on Senator Clinton’s 2006 campaign expenditures claims the Senator “blew” $30 million on her re-election campaign against a nominal opponent. Apparently the cable television bobbleheads are all over this story now, tossing out claims that the Senator’s campaign staff had predicted she’d have $50 million left over from the Senate campaign, when in fact she has $14 million. And Kornblut has been warbling about how much money the Senator’s campaign spent at Staples.
Per an email from Peter Daou:.
He says he does not believe anyone in the Clinton campaign had predicted ending the campaign with a $50 million warchest, or even a $20-30 million warchest.
As was mentioned several paragraphs into the article, part of the campaign money went toward building a massive list of small donor supporters around the country. One assumes this was in anticipation of a presidential campaign, although the Senator has not yet declared being a presidential candidate.
Kornbult’s article doesn’t mention the more than $2.5 million the Senator contributed to the DSCC and DCCC.
Expenditures Kornblut calls “consultant fees” went into advertising production, direct mail, polling, targeting, and phone calls.
On the other hand, David Sirota says some of that money could have been spent on other Senate and House races, which is a good point (although Senator Clinton did give more than $2.5 million to the DSCC and DCCC).
But my question is, why is this a story? For any reason other than, it’s Tuesday, so it’s time to smear Hillary! And will Chris Matthews obsess about it all through Hardball, which is about to start (please, no).
Peter must have missed this on page 2 of the article:
“The candidate also sought to generate good will among her fellow Democratic candidates by giving more than $2.5 million to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other party groups.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/us/politics/21donate.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=1cf680b27f8bb06f&hp&ex=1164171600&partner=homepage
OK, I missed that.
And people wonder why newspapers are losing subscribers – maybe it has something to do with the quality of the product. Newspapers will figure out that they should leave the trivial to TV or the gossip mags if they want to have readers.
The other sin, giving print space to people whose ideas have proven themselves not ready for the real world, was recently committed by my local paper, the LA Times when it published an opinion piece by neo conservative Joshua Muravchik who argued for bombing Iran. Why do we still need to listen to these people?
The larger question is why can’t the media do a better job? Sad.
Moonbat, reading that op-ed was like smacking my head against a brick wall over and over again. So i read it a few more times and then went through it point by point.
http://a517dogg.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-is-this-muravchik.html
As for Hillary… any publicity is good publicity….? Whatever, if she runs I will vote against her in the primaries anyway for the sole reason that I don’t want the White House owned by two families for thirty-two years (1980-2012).
As far as Hillary and her War Chest. She’s gonna need it cause she’ll need all the help she can get.
outside the beltway bubble very few people are all that excited about her. Most believe she’s better staying in the Senate.
I think half the people who want Hillary do not realize that if you vote for Hillary you’ll get Hillary – not Bill.
There is one good thing about her. If you get ahold of one of her speeches and have insomnia, you can play it and fall asleep in less than 5 minutes.
I personally wish she’d just go away and leave 08 to better people like Edwards or Richardson, ect. Just about anyone but her.