1. Paul | 12.05.08

Abama could have spent only $30 million and still would of won the election. The republicans didn’t stand a chance of winning not matter who was on either ticket. And, at least he won the campaign honestly, unlike how Jed Bush helped his far less intelligent brother George steal the election in Florida. In my opinion, someone who watch the debates and actually listened to McCain use chessy propaganda during his campaign and still thought McCain was the better candidate is the kind of person who was dumb enough to vote for a life-long failure like President Bush. I could never understand how republicans who you know wouldn’t hire Pres. Bush to work at their companies (because his life resume is full of failures) would still vote for him as president of the U.S.

2. Andrew B | 12.05.08

Didn’t the Republicans start this $$$ war years ago? Or do you have that short a memory? Or is it that because the Democrats are now better at the game its time to change the rules again?

3. Nelson | 12.05.08

I realize that this article is merely making a somewhat sarcastic point. However, just in case, it’s probably worth pointing out that the money donated, given and raised by the Obama campaign was not $750 million to get a $400,000 job. I was $750 million invested towards what some people viewed as a certain desirably political orientation. While Joe the Plumber may only hold his $47,000 job to earn that $47,000, Obama (and McCain, and any other Presidential candidate) are not in it to earn $400,000 a year. Their motives, shockingly, are political.

I’m not defending Obama (and I did not give any money to either candidate), but to compare the amount raise to the amount he will earn as President is a little…well, silly. McCain’s $238 million is an awful lot to raise for a $400,000 job also, isn’t it?

4. paul | 12.05.08

I like the photo above, smiling all the way to the bank i mean white house.

5. Kelly | 12.05.08

Paul - For someone who doesn’t understand Republicans, I have to say that I don’t understand how a person can feel so strongly about another person; yet not spell that person’s name correctly - especially when they are becoming the next president. Wow. I would say that both candidates had their moments of cheese and propaganda. Now we’ll see what Obama actually will do.

6. Kelly | 12.05.08

Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of using that much money to run campaigns for both parties, we could use the money to lower the deficit of the country. I think that would be the ultimate “act of patriotism.” That’s $988 million dollars that is now gone. It could have been spent on some of the financial crisis that is now occurring instead of borrowing more money from foreign countries to finance bailouts.

7. Nate | 12.05.08

The money raised merely reflects the eagerness people showed contributing to the Obama campaign. There were also far more micro-contributions. To me that is a far more compelling story.

8. Frank | 12.05.08

Our entire system is broken. The system it was founded by, the Constitution of the United States of America, was perfect. We are in dire need of a very drastic change here in the States. Changes I see improving general quality of the U.S. as a country: Politics - NO PARTY SYSTEM. I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat.

I’m an American. The party system makes our decision making body put forth concern for it’s political allies rather than the needs of it’s countrymen. Ultimately this has lead us to the Police State, or “Military Industrial Complex”, in which we currently reside.

Elections: Clearly this is madness. Out of an entire country of people, we’re given 2 or 3 candidates that are hand picked by their parties. Again, it doesn’t take much logic to see where this leads. Logic is the key word here, as it leads to my next area. Education: Our children our stupid. No other way around it. The shocking part is, the schools make them that way.

Our children need to stop being told what to do every minute of the day and have a chance to use their own mind. Human potential stretches farther than any commoner could ever imagine, simply because they’ve never been allowed to imagine it… Finally the most important factor in the downfall of the United States of America.

Distribution of Funds: All I’m gonna say is “$77,000,000 bonus”. All it takes is a few days of some well written legislation, and overnight the money will be back in the pockets of the hard working backs that earned it. It makes me ill on a daily basis as I wake up every day to this… place.

I can only hope that conditions for others are worsening enough that they’re starting to get mad enough to get up and do something. Acting alone is pointless because ,again we live in an age where if I’m not in my cage playing my video games, I’m more than likely going to be arrested for making sense.

9. joe blow | 12.05.08

what is sad is all that money lined the pockets of media corporations.

but what is nice is that the US public, even in a recession, was willing to fork out that much loot to show they don’t support the current administration’s policies.

there really should be limits, but since it is a game waged by the elite, it will always be this way.

well, let’s hope that $750M buys us some change as promised.

10. tiddle | 12.05.08

We now know, that it has little to do with small donors, and the so-called record voters turnout is confirmed to be a myth. Who’s done Obama the favor? The media (in sustaining his myth), Bush (in maintaining his record low approval rating), and the economy. No care cares if McCain can sing and dance. Everyone wants the good old days of the Clinton years, and everyone is tired of GOP. That’s it. And the media helps Obama to make him the No.1 poster boy (Hillary does not look as good as headline story).

So, there you go. History, as it’s made by the media. It’s the biggest con we’ll ever see.

11. SF | 12.05.08

This was a pointless story. A waist to read.

12. Joy | 12.05.08

Well, it’s not exactly GONE, Kelly…

It was spent, on: TV ads, websites, print ads, theme music, personnel paychecks, consultations, air travel, cars and buses, and even things you wouldn’t think of, like postage and clean-up crews. And when you think about it, almost all of that money would have gone to U.S. workers providing services and goods.

THAT’s the master plan, everyone! The 2008 campaign season was OUR bail-out!

13. Dave | 12.05.08

The real question is who does he “owe” for all of that money?

It falls into two catagories 1) Poor black people who believe Obama is going to take money from working successful people and give it to the less fortunate. Needless to say much of the small donations were from welfare checks.

2) wealthy people seeking political favors and influence.

In my opininion Obama is now “bought” and will have to do as his “bosses” or financers say..

Still hard to believe that America voted this man in just for the sake of “change”

Well America you made your bed now you have to lie in it..

14. Jeff | 12.05.08

Right, use the money to fix our financial crisis. Instead of a $700 billion bailout plan, we’d be looking at the $699 billion bailout– 1/7th of 1% percent closer to financial bliss, and all it takes is a couple years of incessant solicitation. Just think, in 700 years we could have the whole thing paid off just by using donations.

15. johnnyb | 12.05.08

I’m curious to know how the individual campaigns’ fundraising compares to that of their party organizations and affiliated groups. How much did the Democrats raise all together, compared to the Republicans?

16. Karl | 12.05.08

Kelly, how short-sited you are to be so crass as to point out a mistake in typing and ignoring the comment solely because of it, perhaps you are like alot of the country over the last eight years… so fixated upon one point that you miss the big picture…
I was one of the independents that the candidates were trying to woo, I felt that Obama only got into the Senate to become President, I waited for the old McCain to emerge (the man from 2000) he never did, all he did was smear his opponent and never told us what he was going to do, His decission of Sara was a dismal foretelling of his ability to pick the right people for the right job. The most important thing that happened, after listening to ALL the debates, and most of the speeches of both canididates and their running mates was, Obama’s message spoke to me and 3/4 of the population of these United States, McCain never did.
We believe him, and yes we are ready for change. I hope it is good change. Time will tell

17. Karl | 12.05.08

“That’s $988 million dollars that is now gone. It could have been spent on some of the financial crisis that is now occurring instead of borrowing more money from foreign countries to finance bailouts.”

Actually it was a huge boon to the economy… where do you think that money was spent? In our economy, all that money is being spend in the US an dbeign put to work.

18. Alexander(ScKSP) | 12.05.08

Creative, “disentropic”, leading to a more complex, more organized, enriched situation, with the emergence of new traits

19. Roger | 12.05.08

Obama ran the truly first 21th Century campaign. McCain and the GOP was still mired in the 20th Century. Their political philosophies also mirrored that fact: McCain wanted to return to the ways things were; Obama wants to lead us where we need to go.

And since Joe only worked for a plumber how about if we start calling him Joe the Plumber’s Helper. ;o)

20. David | 12.05.08

Its appalling to think of what could have been done with that money: new schools, better educators, infrastructure repairs, the list goes on.

21. Will | 12.05.08

Kelly - That money wasn’t TAX money, that’s the whole point of public financing. All of that money came from donations. If you’re going to make that argument, you might as well tell everyone in America to start donating to the country to bail us out of the financial crisis… “hey everyone lets all pitch in an extra 40 bucks to bail the country out, be sure to send it in an envelope marked Financial Crisis, 111 Wall St.”. Obama actually saved the country $84 million in tax dollars by rejecting federal funding for campaigning.

22. Josh Rehman | 12.05.08

You forgot to mention that the job interview lasted almost 2 years.

23. passingby | 12.05.08

Let’s forget about all that negative criticism for a moment…let’s just say, if a presidential candidiate is not able to raise millions of dollars for his campaign, how do you expect him to raise billions of dollars for his country if elected? To a certain extent, one does need to have extraordinary business/financial skills to be an executive, being that of a company or a nation…That said, if Jerry Yang could have brought in the $47 billions for Yahoo, he wouldn’t have to resign; if John Mccain could have raised $750 million for his campaign, I would have given him more credential in solving our nation’s financial crisis.

24. Tex | 12.05.08

Now you know how much it takes to be president! And for the people that think he raised all this money legally, think again! Whit most of his money coming from the net, there is no way to tell WHO or WHERE it came from. It could (probably did) come from terrorist or American hating organizations. Yea I know that’s a far stretch, but that’s just it, you can’t tell. With the Acorn Group, they had people donating illegally as well. So don’t act like he won fairly. He set McCain up by promising to only us the government money and then backed out of it. McCain being a man of his word was locked in at what 86 mil? He never stood a chance, not against 700 MIL!

And for all of you democratic Obama supporters, so far he’s backed off of 3 of his promises already.
1 end the war in less then a yr. Now we are there for 3 yrs. But that was the Bush plan.
2 shack up Washington, **** he’s turned it into a Clinton admin reunion lol. If that’s not the same old Washington I don’t know what is.
3 he said he would cut the tax on the poor and raise the tax on the rich. NOT!!!!! He’s is part of that group, you didn’t really think he was going to kick himself in the but did you?

He’s a joke, the people he’s putting in office are jokes and in 2 yrs the Republicans will take back congress. And in 4 yrs the Whitehouse!

25. Don Zimmerman | 12.05.08

Not a word was said abut the millions donated to Obama by labor unions, special interest such as the AARP, the NEA, the ACLU and the trial lawyers.

26. Curly | 12.05.08

To me it looks like someone bought the election. Scince there was and no way now to show where all of the money come from. Both McCain and Clinton had safeguards on their websights to stop multi donations from a single credit card which Obama didn’t. Non of the bundlers provided a way to check to see if the money they bundled came form a few very large donations or from the smaler legal contributions. In the end if the office of president was bought and payed for by a few people we, the rest of the people of the USA will pay for the purchase.

27. Tex | 12.05.08

*Passingby*

McCain couldn’t raise more money.

This is from an new article
“McCain’s Senate and campaign staffers did not respond to questions about why campaign finance reform wasn’t discussed, but it clearly is a sore point for the Arizona senator and his team. They believe Obama was never held to account for his public funding flip-flop, which put him at a huge cash advantage over McCain in the final months of the campaign.

McCain did participate in the system, which limits candidates to spending only the amount of a taxpayer-funded grant. This year, the grant was $84 million for the general election. Meanwhile, Obama’s historic fundraising effort pulled in well more than $640 million for the primary and the general, allowing him to dramatically outspend McCain on ads, offices and get-out-the-vote efforts.”

It’s hard to win against cheats. Now you know who you put into office. And you think he’s is going to be the PEOPLES president?

28. joe the plumber | 12.05.08

I voted for the lesser of 2 evils and lost. Had Obama indicated how he would position himself in the election process I would have voted for him. It is a shame that we did not know what we were getting. I hope I am correct that he has now become a centralist now that he is elected and not the tax and spend that he ran on.

29. Aamer Abbas | 12.05.08

Paul, I understand the point you’re trying to make; but, dude, at least learn to spell so you don’t make the rest of us look bad for agreeing with you.

Better yet, if you can’t present a viewpoint without sounding like a bumbling idiot, just refrain from posting ’cause others are capable of doing it for you.

30. Greg S | 12.05.08

I think most of you missed the point. The election was bought, period. The media for the last 2 election cycles made sure we voted a certain way. Don’t forget that the Democratically controlled congress has a lower approval rating than Bush, oh and to all you Bush detractors who believe he is not intelligent, I would like to see you do that job for a day, let alone 8 years. You blame the economy on one person, yet the congress is who spends the money….the President just endorses the checks. That means they BOTH are at fault.

So far Obama is breaking most of his election winning promises. As I told anyone who would listen, politicians will say anything to get elected to the most powerful job on the planet. Obama was just a better financed, better dressed, and smoother talking liar than McCain. I am actually embarrassed that America voted into office someone with no executive experience, who obviously can’t do simple math since his “plan” to fix the country does not work mathematically and never did. We made history alright, but at what cost?

31. Carl Johnson | 12.05.08

The plumber spent money that was donated by average people who had big expectations of what his plumber can do. They expect him clean out a major cesspool created by some very sick people who defecated to the extent that it gummed up the works and it will take much prowess to clean it all out and then sanitize so that once again our plumbing will work as it was intended.

32. tony | 12.05.08

Frank: no party system = nationalism.. guess what Nazi was short for?

33. Dan O | 12.05.08

This was a stupid and pointless article. People can spot winners and losers a mile away. Obama won because he used his brain. He did not run a campaign of fear (a typical republican stunt). He talked about what we CAN do, not what we shouldn’t do. As a lifelong republican, even I am sick of it. I voted for Obama, and slept like a baby the night he won.

34. jvpski | 12.05.08

Obama was/is a pawn for the Media elite. They saw a guy who was “full” of himself and will be easy to manipulate. Simple, he lied about all sort of things. This will be the worst four years in the USA history. All of the smug elites, liberals etc., will look fondly on the George Bush years. Idiots All!

It is a shame that big money and small simple minded ideas won this election. He is already back tracking on his talk of change….not a clue does the “One” have, what a bunch of fools.

35. Scott | 12.05.08

Wow. I’m always surprised when I read message boards like this. A few points:
1. If you don’t spell well, check it before you post. If you’re lazy with your spell checking, I’ll assume you’re lazy with your fact checking.
2. Adding an exclamation mark, but not adding actual facts, does not boost your argument.
3. Spewing kneejerk anarchist rhetoric (THIS ELECTION WAS BOUGHT ZOMGG!!!) is the opposite of making a point.
4. Those of you who don’t like Obama’s resume - who don’t believe a short-time member of Congress from Illinois who holds center-left views and has a flair for public speaking - would have voted against Abraham Lincoln. You need to explain why he, himself, would make bad decisions. If you hold this view, it would be impossible to vote McCain Palin. McCain was not an executive, and Palin was not remotely qualified for the world stage.
5. The presidency is a major player in our economic health. The president, by and large, sets the tone for the Fed (which controls interest rates), regulatory environment, and public spending.
6. Public spending had ZERO to do with this economic crisis. The government is not the entity that is going bankrupt, or defaulting on payments. I defy anyone to prove that Congress’s budgeting was in any way involved.
7. Obama is not a leftist, radical, nor is he remotely a socialist. I defy anyone who is actually familiar with the terms to prove it. These were simply talking points put forth by an opposition campaign that needed quick labels to negatively define an opponent. That’s the source of the “inexperience” trope used by both Sens. McCain and Clinton.

36. Jose Perez | 12.05.08

At least Obama got something for the $750 mil. McCain got a big fat zero for the $ 238 mil that he spent.
Besides Jimmy should know that it is the people’s money that is spent not the cadidates. My $200 investment in Obama will bear some fruit: He will control the greedy banks( I am tired of silly fees and penalties). He will also stop the bleeding ( money and real blood) in Iraq; and of course universal health care is coming. I think all the contributors to Obama will get our moneys worth and then some.

37. tom | 12.05.08

blah, blah, blah.
nothing changes.

38. mod | 12.06.08

Just shows you how badly people wanted the republicans out of office. I have $500 myself.

39. Thomas Philip | 12.06.08

So, I guess 66,882,230 citizens voted because they saw more ads from Obama. And not because of what he said in those ads, on his website or during the rallies.

That money must have bought some really great technology through which a live debate on TV made one candidate sound chessy and the other pragmatic. Even the visuals must have been altered so that one candidate looks like a gladiator and another appears Presidential.

I guess we all know who is paying each of us to read this article and spend time discussing about an election that is over. So there is no such thing as passion, belief, faith or judgement. It’s the money, stupid!

I guess GM, Ford and Chrysler spent all their money on technology and not on advertising. Because people seem to be buying cars based on the number ads they see and not the quality of the product.

The same people who feel Obama is being Marxist are the same people who now say that the money spent during a election campaign is bad for the economy. Did I miss something in school?

40. Eric | 12.06.08

Solid, breezy primer on Obama’s fundraising and campaign spending. The article, however, would have been stronger if it provided more context for readers. For instance, does the candidate who spends the most money always win the presidential election? If so, that’s a very depressing fact. Could you include a short box that shows - maybe going back to 1960 - spending and election outcomes? What percentage of vote do election experts believe is actually influenced by campaign spending? Or is it as simple as the guy who spends the most, wins?
Common Cause, Public Citizen, and other good government groups have been pushing for fairer, better elections and public financing for decades. Do their reforms, when adopted, actually work? How would we know? How do US election and campaign financing compare with other democratic nations? Canada? England? France? Germany? Japan? Just curious.
You raised an excellent topic, summarized a solid chunk of information, and might want to return to the topic with additional facts and insights for CSM readers.
Or so it seems to me.

41. Raughammer. | 12.06.08

I really hope this is not the begining of our end as a world power.

P.S., why is there so much mystery concerning BHO’s past?

42. Daniela | 12.07.08

People wake up all politicians lie, it doesn’t matter which party they belong to.
The one who wins is the most believable one. All they want is our money

43. David | 12.09.08

Obama BOUGHT the election. It should be a crime in this Country to buy an election. My GOD: 750 million dollars for a 400,000 thousand dollar a year job? Next election: ONLY BILLIONNAIRES NEED APPLY. Welcome to Communist America where there will soon be no need for an election.

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