Ben White at Politico makes some interesting points in today’s piece, “Why Clinton can’t stop raising Wall Street cash…” (LOL, spellcheck’s substitution of vice for vize in the subtitle, “Bashed by Sanders for financial-services ties, but dependent on big donors, she is caught in a vice.”)
In White’s analysis, Hillary would do just about anything to silence critics of her Wall Street connections, but her campaign’s viability depends on Wall Street.
What’s not in dispute is that Clinton lacks the luxury of pulling the plug on all her Wall Street fundraising. Her campaign ended the year with $38 million in the bank to $28 million for Sanders. But Sanders can tap into a vast network of small donors who keep pumping money into his campaign.
Clinton is much more reliant on large donors and those capable of bundling big checks. Hosts for the Philadelphia event, for instance, were asked to bundle $27,000 in contributions. The basic entrance fee was $1,000. Clinton last year raised 58 percent of her $110.4 million in primary money from donors who have now given the maximum of $2,700, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. That means she has to keep finding new sources of big checks.
This is why she recently postponed, but did not cancel, several politically awkward fundraisers.
Taking money from Wall Street may get slightly easier for Clinton after the New Hampshire primary. She has a big lead in South Carolina, which votes Feb. 27, and in southern Super Tuesday states that vote March 1. Many of those states feature large percentages of African-American voters who remain loyal to Obama and may be less moved by attacks on Clinton’s ties to Wall Street. This is in part why the most recent financial industry fundraisers were postponed, rather than canceled.
Taking money from bankers associated with Bain Capital, the former home of Mitt Romney, may look terrible coming right before New Hampshire votes. But it will likely not be as painful in a couple of weeks.
The whole piece is worth a read.