Talk about an image makeover! See it for yourself. If you are in Bellevue, Washington on July 17 and carrying a satchel brimming with cash, how about penciling in breakfast with Michelle Obama? Though MO can’t guarantee too much face time, a cool $2,300 donation will allow you to tell your grandkids that you dined in the same room as the First Lady.
The Barack Obama campaign, free from the challenge poised by Hillary Clinton, is now fine-tuning its theme of “Change We Can Believe In.” to “Big Bucks We Can Believe In.” The $25 Internet donations that built the Obama buzz are nothing more than sweet nostalgia.
Big-time Clinton backers are wooed with special invites to the MO event. BO’s people hope that eating some Cheerios with MO will be a “step in our march toward unity here in the Pacific Northwest and we would like to involve supporters of former candidate Hillary Clinton.”
The BO campaign now tells potential backers the $2,300 breakfast money is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship. That tidy sum goes to BO’s primary campaign (money that the Illinois Senator is allowed to spend before the August convention even though he does not have a primary opponent). Donors can kick in another $2,300 for the general election, and anything else up to $28,500 is slated for the Democratic National Committee through the Obama Victory Fund.
BO’s big money push is bound to turn off many of his young idealistic supporters who feel they have been hoodwinked by the Illinois Senator.
Bob Herbert, in July 8’s New York Times, wrote that after BO’s Iowa caucus win, “there was a wide and growing belief—encouraged by the candidate--that something new in American politics had arrived.”
BO is turning out to be the same old politician. He does throw a bone to grassroots supporters. Obama is raffling off $5 tickets for a chance to win a trip to the Denver convention. Ten lucky winners will be chosen. Rest assured those winners will be in the cheap seats.
