

How the 2016 Candidates Are Getting Their Money - altern8
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/28/435186527/charts-2016-presidential-donors-millionaires

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edgyswingset
Disclaimer: this is coming from someone who's voting for Bernie Sanders.

I find it a tad ironic that, in terms of the paper trail, Donald Trump is one
of the most authentic candidates right now. Obviously he doesn't need the
money from huge donors, but still ... it's interesting at least.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Well in the past he ran for president, too, always on a hype-media issue like
Obama's birth certificate that wouldn't actually give him any chance of
running, yet allowed him to put his name in the media. (exposure is probably
his biggest business model, the more exposure he has, the more people view him
as a success, the easier he can get a TV show or license out his name for some
building or golf resort he doesn't own). So in the past he never actually did
anything a normal politician would do, i.e. fundraising, or indeed divulging
his financial assets when officially filing the paperwork, because he just
used the presidential race as some form media platform for a few weeks, very
much like say Kickstarter, for his business.

This time around it's a bit different, he seems to actually be campaigning,
participating in debates, filing the paperwork. But even now I still don't
think he's serious about running. I mean the way he talks about policies is
just a joke. 'I'm gonna make America so great, I'm gonna make you soooo proud,
you're going to become the happiest people', I mean it's just laughable.
Anyway my point is that he doesn't have any real policy plans. He's like some
of the Dutch politicians we have over here that make policy promises that they
can't keep because they break Dutch, international and European laws and
agreements that the Netherlands has signed. Everyone who knows anything about
how the world works laughs at this, but people eat it up. So I'm still not
convinced he's actually interested to run for the office all the way,
(although I'm less sure about it than ever) and if that's true he's not going
to be serious about raising millions from big donors, so Trump's paper trail
isn't surprising in the least. Here you can see how little he raised as of
earlier this month [0] That type of money can't sustain popularity in the real
elections when people spend $300m on attacking every single thing you do from
every single angle all over TV, Radio, print and the internet, which is why
people are skeptical combined with Trump's lack of policy plans, lack of solid
political team who's working on real policy plans and disingenuous campaigns
in the best (I wanna be president cause Obama is from Kenya).

Beyond that, it's early days. The last presidential elections all had $1b
dollar budgets for both candidates of the ruling parties for example, and both
parties spent about $1b each. (Obama, Romney, McCain), and both candidates had
2/3rd or more of their money coming from large donors. Lastly, it's an
interesting note to make that Obama spent 2x as much per vote than McCain in
2008, and about 40% more than Romney per vote. I don't think it'll be much
different for anyone who wants to win this day and age, Clinton, Bush, Trump
or Bernie.

Also if you look at fundraising, nearly half of it goes through parties rather
than individuals, and those parties then put their weight behind the nominee.
That fundraising isn't covered in this article, and it's exactly that
fundraising which is most lopsided towards large contributors. So really I
think it's much too soon to make any sweeping conclusions. After all, a guy
like Bernie earlier this month had raised just $15m. That's top 6 by the way,
not a small amount, but given the winner of the election is likely to spend
more than $1 billion, the distribution of 1% of the early funding days
probably isn't very significant.

[0]
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electio...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/election-2016-campaign-
money-race.html)

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Sven7
I wish Bill Gates would run. Maybe do what Bloomberg did for NYC. Current crop
of leaders are just depressing to watch.

When the history books get written, I can't imagine anything worthwhile being
written about any of them.

~~~
setpatchaddress
Nonsense. Nerds have no understanding of politics. Please read:
[http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds-
politics](http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds-politics)

~~~
Sven7
That was an unnecessarily long and boring write up wishing for more or less
the same thing I am wishing for.

As the tech industry grows in power and influence, and government
inefficiencies stand in the way of progress, it's a safe bet politicians will
feel the pressure to change.

This cycle has already played out many times over with Wall Street, Defense,
Energy, Pharma etc getting involved in politics. The same incentives that made
the Rockefellers, Bushes, Cheneys and Trumps to get involved will see future
Gates, Zucks and Musks stepping up too.

The difference between the tech sector and other sectors however, unseen
before historically, is the speed and scale at which they are able to turn
what was previously considered impossible to possible.

The first serious govt vs tech industry conflicts are just beginning to emerge
whether in energy, telecom, privacy, security, payments etc. Government and
traditional politics doesn't stand a chance. They will be subverted.

