Buttigieg campaign took money from Kavanaugh lawyers, issuing refund

[President Biden 5,898]

5 minutes ago, HorusRa2 said:

AOC was massively overspent by her opponent and she still won. You don’t have to take corporate money in order to win. You’re associating the win with the money when there’s also the component of the platform, the messenger and whether or not people feel you are going to fight for what you’re campaigning on. 

 

That was in a small House district where she had a clear advantage of being the “local”, being more diverse than Joe Crowley (and thus, more relatable to her district’s demographics), and having a bold platform which addressed local problems. Costs for House races are rarely over a million or two at MAX. 
 

 

Presidential races cost tens of millions and primary bids are very reliant on having the money to run your first commercials, investing in a good staff, etc. Don’t forget that candidates money (corporate or not) pays for hard working campaign staffers. Low budget campaigns like AOCs probably barely pay their staff if even.

[PartySick 172,389]

26 minutes ago, Halsey said:

Because he needs money in order to win. This election is a huge risk and not the time to put morals over effectivity. We need to WIN. That’s it. No political purity test. Also all corporations aren’t inherently evil. Bernie supports Ben & Jerrys? Would it be wrong if he took corporate money from them? I don’t really think so. 

It might also be because Sanders and Warren destroy him on the grassroots front. Without these huge donors, his campaign would be totally broke

I don't care where politicians get their money from, as long as it doesn't sway their voting habits or policy positions.

Warren is one who's taken some big money but clearly hasn't shifted to a billionaire friendly campaign and continues to put the focus on getting a lot of small donations.

Idk about Pete though.

[Whispering 18,865]

This happens in every campaign receiving a large amount of donations. These two unknown lawyers also donated to three other candidates. All candidates have to return money.

Campaign staff are supposed to vet every single donation, but mistakes happen...especially when you have 700,000 donations. It’s not like Pete is doing this work himself, or that the lawyers for Brett Kavanaugh are particularly well known people. Probably some intern just didn’t recognize the names or skimmed by them. The mistake was corrected, the race goes on.

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

4 hours ago, Halsey said:

Because he needs money in order to win. This election is a huge risk and not the time to put morals over effectivity. We need to WIN. That’s it. No political purity test. Also all corporations aren’t inherently evil. Bernie supports Ben & Jerrys? Would it be wrong if he took corporate money from them? I don’t really think so. 

It's not just about morals, its about corruption. Bernie has over 4,000,000 individual donations and has raised the most money in every quarter and has the most volunteers (over 1,000,000) without taking money from any PACs or large corporations, so clearly we can have morals and effectivity. The backing he would get from the DNC and people in the scope of a general election too... it would be massive. One of the big reasons AOC is so incredibly popular is because she too is unbeholden to corporate interests, she won her campaign while making under 10% of the money raised by the incumbent and won on the strength of her message and her effective on the ground with grassroots energy. Hillary Clinton outspent Trump - still lost. We do need large amounts of money to win an election, but we need to shake our reliance on money in Washington seriously if we ever want to pass real reform like change measures. That's a big reason Democrats are afraid of Bernie. If he wins and shows that we don't have to take corporate money to win, it upsets the power structure of the ultra wealthy elites and corporations, who do not want to be challenged.

Not all corporations or organizations are bad, but you can very easily look up campaign donations and see their beneficiaries, its public record essentially. Currently, or at least the last time I checked, the biggest arguably "corporate" donations Bernie has seen have come from nurses and teachers unions or organizations that are collectives of middle class workers, not big CEOs and multimillionaires. That is perfectly fine. Large checks from fundraisers and donations from groups that are subsidiaries of big pharmaceutical companies, private health insurers, Think Tanks funded by large conglomerate organizations, fossil fuel industry,  etc. are all things to be skeptical of, because they have a lot of money, don't represent a lot of people, and have a long, visible history of influencing the politics of people they support. It's legalized bribery, just plain and simple. Bernie is refusing this kind of money, as well as large donations from the ultra wealthy, who also have too much influence. Pete is accepting this money and still making less. If Ben & Jerry was doing things like, lobbying for anti-regulation bills and had unethical business practices or adverse environmental policies, then yes a company like Ben & Jerry should be held at arm's length  Maybe its a purity test, but we can't actually ever get anything done while this is a problem. Pete seems uninterested in solving it.

Politicians that say "we need to end corruption, citizens united, etc" but who then go on to take large amounts of money from the people who benefit from this almost always walks it back significantly or stop mentioning it. You just can't be anti corruption and anti-money in politics and accept that money and expect people to trust you. Look at Obama's administration officials and affiliates. He refused to prosecute the Big Banks after the awful bailout, let people foreclose by the millions, and basically just turned a blind way to the predatory practices of banks. It's the entire reason Elizabeth Warren got involved and started the CFPB, She saw that the organizations that were created under the administration in order to help ease transitions weren't actually helping people and were letting corruption continue unpunished, so she lobbied to get it passed (much to Obama official's chagrin, because they were big bank and insurance money funded  ) 

Spoiler

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/12/warren-obama-2020-228068

^ better look into the creation of the CFPB and evidence of Warren and Obama being more adversarial than they claim to be. The videos of her taking on these people and corporate bank CEOs in the past are honestly great, this is the one area I trust her to be very aggressive on. She should make Kamala her AG and take on the banks if she had a chance of winning   Now looking at his comments the other day about how he cant support Warren because she would undermine his legacy, it just makes Obama look even worse tbh. He opposed her anti-corruption politics then and he does now as well.

 

[HorusRa2 5,005]

9 hours ago, roomdivide said:

It helps being in one of the most liberal places in America.

Pete has to be a leader for all of America, for those who vote for him, and those who won't vote for him.

She ran against a democrat so the fact she’s in a liberal district did not matter. She also had zero name ID. When you’re campaining on the right message, you don’t have to have the most money to win. I’m not saying you don’t have to raise anything but certainly not by going to events where you charge 2K to go to the event.