The gloves are coming off in the US presidential race. Today, Rudy Giuliani’s team labelled Mitt Romney a Hillary Clinton clone, which is like a Labour politician calling one of his colleagues a Thatcherite in the 1980s. While on the Democratic side, John Edwards and Barack Obama are taking increasingly openly swings at Hillary Clinton. So this LA Times story about Hillary’s fundraising might give either of them the opening they need to go after Hillary on what are her three biggest weaknesses: her links to the Clinton scandals of the 1990s, trustworthiness and being part of the same old political establishment.
It is hard to put a sympathetic spin on this story about Clinton’s surprising success in raising large amounts of coin in New York’s Chinatown neighbourhood, an area where 45 percent of people are living below the poverty line.
“The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.
And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.” The issue now is whether Obama and Edwards both feel confident enough in their own fundraising efforts to make this an issue and whether they are prepared to take the really hard shot at Hillary that they would need to, to knock her off her stride. Stay tuned.
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