Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden still plans on attending a fundraiser hosted by a co-founder of a fossil fuel company on Thursday even after the candidate was challenged over the event during CNN’s town hall on climate change.
Oh, the humanity!!!
So now we’re dissing people who support good candidates because of their job titles?
Really??
I don’t care what the son-of-a-bitch does for a living if he’s helping to defeat trump.
And attending a fund-raiser doesn’t automatically mean bowing to the host’s demands.
Democratic purity tests are exhausting.
Biden may be explaining himself awkwardly, but I don’t think he’s wrong. Small donation campaigns are very nice, and might be enough to win a primary, but as long as we have the God-forsaken system we’re presently stuck with, big-money contributors are going to be important to Presidential campaigns. The point is to work the system to our advantage, then, after winning a few elections, go on to change the system. But we’ll never do that unless we actually win first.
Agree, but to the extent that Biden was uninformed about Goldman’s involvements is unsettling. There has to be some test as to whether accepting money is wise given its origins, which of course gives rise to the whole notion of ‘dark money,’ domestic or foreign. For example, would any candidate be smart in accepting money from porn kings??
I’d say Biden was misinformed, not uninformed.
And the guy is hosting a fundraiser—not funding Biden’s campaign.
Money is—and has always been—the mother’s milk of political campaigns.
Whether it should be is an argument for another time.
Until that changes, big-money bundlers and contributors are what every viable candidate needs to have a chance of winning.
Remember—it’s the individuals who donate, not the corporations they work for.
The dark money issue is entirely separate from this, and the example of “porn kings” is risible.
I am keenly aware of the rot of money in campaigns and politics. Misinformed or uninformed, Biden was caught unaware and gives ammo to the Repubs. My example is not risible, nor would other examples where donors are of dubious character. Taking money from anyone no matter their repute opens the door to criticism, a matter of opinion that the Trumpers and other deplorables would eat up like candy. The whole matter of money and its origins cannot be totally deferred to another day, but agree that it is rotten system to contend with some principled discretion.
Rich establishment people are Biden’s base. You can’t stop him from spending time among his people. If you don’t like that you can always support Liz or Bernie. Biden doesn’t promise anything but to replace Trump and his rich people with another set of establishment rich people.
The problem is, no one forced Biden to take that pledge. If you’re going to say you won’t take money from people in a certain line of business, you have to stand by that. (Hosting a fundraiser is worse than just writing a check – it means more money and therefore the potential for more access, and also implies a cozier relationship between the candidate and party host.)
The trouble with that kind of broad pledge is exactly what’s happening with Biden – he’s left to parse the guy’s day-to-day responsibilities with a fossil fuel company. If he profits from the company, he falls under the pledge. There’s little way around it, but Biden’s trying to thread that needle.
Especially the ones where you have to be a Real Democrat (like Dan Lipinski, who has a 60% Democratic voting record) in order to run on the Democratic Party Line (like Bernie Sanders, who has a 99.99999% Democratic Party voting record)…
Yawn. If I were one of the people who is so frantically desperate to have someone else in the lead (as opposed to simply staying rational about my preference for another candidate), I’d be pretty pissed that TPM spends its time with this petty bullshit smearing Biden instead of helping my candidate with coverage and getting the word out.
But hey, it worked so well for Hillary when that’s what the MSM focused on all day every day with Trump, it simply MUST be the right strategy for the concerted effort to kill Biden’s candidacy, right?
It’s been established that both Warren And Sanders are both millionaires. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
FIFY
Really? It’s not like Goldman is some dude who offered to host a fundraiser. These guys go way back. In fact, in 2008 he WAS funding Biden’s campaign, acting as his director of finance for the northeast region of the US.
I know a lot of millionaires. There are about 12 million of them in the US alone. Hell, on paper I am one too. The really big money people start at billionaire. This guy is problematic because he is in fossil fuels, not that there is anything wrong with that unless you give a shit about climate change.
There’s Harris and 15 others as well on the card at the moment.
87%
70%
Saw Biden last night on Colbert and he has a whole plan to address climate change and it sounded ok to me. I don’t think this fundraiser changes his plans any.