Yeah. Remember that little thing
I mentioned a month ago, and
a long while back in May, about the difference in Obama's efforts towards transparency and HRC's? It's
come back up:
Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters, zeroed in on Mrs. Clinton’s loan and said that her decision not to disclose her income tax returns raised questions about the loan.
“I’ll just say that I’ve released my tax returns,” he said, responding to a question about tax returns. “That’s been a policy I’ve maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from.”
Mr. Obama stopped short of issuing a call for Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton to release their returns.
“I’m not going to get into the intricacies of their finances,” Mr. Obama told reporters as he flew to a rally in Nebraska. “That’s something that you’ll have to ask them.”
Nebraska holds nominating caucuses on Saturday.
Clinton campaign officials said she would release her returns if she won the nomination. The officials said there was enough information in her public Senate financial disclosures to assess her personal finances.
Her Senate forms do not list exact deductible expenses like interest or medical costs. The tax returns would show exact interest and dividends from investments, not just the ranges on the disclosure forms.
Mrs. Clinton has been an advocate for transparency in campaign finance, as has Mr. Obama.
For all the confidence expressed by the Clinton campaign, the onus remains on Mrs. Clinton to show fund-raising muscle, in view of her raising less and relying on the loan as well as a $10 million transfer last year from her Senate campaign account to her presidential account.
Advisers said the loan was made on Jan. 28 from Mrs. Clinton’s share of her personal funds that she has with Mr. Clinton. They said it was not a bank loan, nor was collateral needed to secure it. The advisers said no investments were liquidated to make the loan.
The loan was not disclosed widely until after the vote on Tuesday night, Clinton advisers said, for fear that the news might make Mrs. Clinton look like a fading candidate. Several donors said Wednesday that they were concerned that the campaign was essentially running on fumes, especially when they learned that some aides were working without pay. Shortly after midnight Wednesday, however, the Clinton team issued an e-mail message saying that it had raised $3 million in 24 hours. By daylight on Thursday, the advisers said the campaign was so successful that all aides would be paid and that Mrs. Clinton’s war chest seemed to be stabilizing.
The advisers used the conference call in part to focus attention on the Ohio and Texas primaries. The aides say Mrs. Clinton believes she has a better chance in those states than in many of the contests this month like Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington State.
“I think we’ll have some bumps in the road, some difficult states in the next week or two,” Mark Penn, the senior strategist of the campaign, told the donors.
He and Mr. McAuliffe emphasized the importance of the Ohio and Texas primaries.
Want to know why they're looking ahead to Ohio and Texas, instead of today's primaries? David Brooks tells us why -- the education gap between HRC voters and Barack supporters:
Hillary Clinton is a classic commodity provider. She caters to the less-educated, less-pretentious consumer. As Ron Brownstein of The National Journal pointed out on Wednesday, she won the non-college-educated voters by 22 points in California, 32 points in Massachusetts and 54 points in Arkansas. She offers voters no frills, just commodities: tax credits, federal subsidies and scholarships. She’s got good programs at good prices.
Barack Obama is an experience provider. He attracts the educated consumer. In the last Pew Research national survey, he led among people with college degrees by 22 points. Educated people get all emotional when they shop and vote. They want an uplifting experience so they can persuade themselves that they’re not engaging in a grubby self-interested transaction. They fall for all that zero-carbon footprint, locally grown, community-enhancing Third Place hype. They want cultural signifiers that enrich their lives with meaning.
Obama offers to defeat cynicism with hope. Apparently he’s going to turn politics into a form of sharing. Have you noticed that he’s actually carried into his rallies by a flock of cherubs while the heavens open up with the Hallelujah Chorus? I wonder how he does that...
Observe the marketplace. The next states on the primary calendar have tons of college-educated Obamaphile voters. Maryland is 5th among the 50 states, Virginia is 6th. But later on, we get the Hillary-friendly states. Ohio is 40th in college education. Pennsylvania is 32nd.
But it’ll still be tied after all that. The superdelegates will pick the nominee — the party honchos, the deal-makers, the donors, the machine. Swinging those people takes a level of cynicism even Dr. Retail can’t pretend to understand. That’s Tammany Hall. That’s the court at Versailles under Louis XIV.
And that's what kills me.
