For their first public appearance together since that last debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be attending the same campaign event in (wait for it) Unity, New Hampshire. Some things you just can’t make up.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to return to life in the Senate and announced that she will campaign with Sen. Barack Obama in New Hampshire on Friday, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee began reaching out to female voters who had formed the backbone of Clinton’s support in the primary season.
The Obama-Clinton event will take place in the town of Unity, in the southwest corner of a swing state that Obama hopes to carry in November. The symbolism goes beyond the town’s name, as Clinton and Obama each won 107 votes there in the January primary.
Of course, Senator Clinton wants something from Obama in exchange for her support, and no, I’m not talking about the Vice presidency. Something a little more urgent: debt relief.
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Reports: Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., spoke by phone Sunday night, the first time the presumptive Democratic nominee and his former rival have exhanged words since their private meeting in Washington weeks ago.
Clinton and Obama discussed retiring Clinton’s over $10 million in campaign debt, a conversation Democratic sources called “constructive”.
Hmmm. Sunday they talk for the first time since their meeting at Senator Feinstein’s house prior to Clinton’s concession/endorsement speech, and Friday they will appear together for the first time on the same political stage with Clinton asking her supporters to vote for the man she called not ready to field 3 am calls in the wee hours of the night. And the very “constructive” conversation they had was all about “retiring Clinton’s over $10 million in . . . debt.”
Yes, indeed, money does make the world go round. Of course, she’s under the gun, so to speak. She only has until the end of August to pay off her debt to herself or the maximum she can receive on the loans she extended her campaign will be $250,000 under current finance law. That’s quite a “haircut” to take even if your husband can generate several hundreds of thousands of dollars every time he shows up at a speaking engagement and has multi-millionaire friends who have helped him and her earn over $100 million dollars since he left office in 2001.
So I suppose Obama will be sending out an email appeal to his supporters soon asking them to donate to his new best friend, Hillary Clinton. Well, you can do what you like, I suppose. In light of the FISA cave in, however, and the absence of leadership by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on that issue, I’m not inclined to send either of them any of the dollars I don’t have. I have enough debts of my own, thank you very much, and no good reason to fund the lifestyles and political campaigns of those who haven’t stood up for my civil liberties lately.
You see, Senators Obama and Clinton, I don’t have special tax relief or regulatory deals for my business interests that I need politicians to look out for. I’m not going to ask for special favors to effect a corporate merger, or get a government contract. All I need is for my leaders to stand behind the Constitution, the only government document that grants me anything that I value – individual rights like freedom of speech and protection from unwarranted invasions of my privacy by my government, to name but two. So when I see either or both of you standing up for the rights I was supposed to have been guaranteed under that Constitution, that is when I scrape together a few bucks to send in for your political campaigns, past (Clinton) and future (Obama).
And not before. You see, online funding of political campaigns may be the new public financing system of the 21st Century, but that doesn’t mean those of us who send in our donations by PayPal don’t want something for our money. And unlike other political donors it won’t cost you anything in terms of your personal integrity, though it does require one essential ingredient that, unfortunately, a lot of Democrats in Congress seem to lack these days: a spine.
