2020 Democrats Love Small Donors. But Some Really Love Big Donors, Too.

[brooklynite]

New York Times

Senator Cory Booker spun through a San Francisco fund-raiser hosted on Friday afternoon by high-tech titans and wealthy venture capitalists, including the investor Ron Conway. That evening, in New York, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand gathered donations at the Upper West Side home of Matthew Mallow, a vice chairman of the investment giant BlackRock.

And on Sunday night, Senator Kamala Harris is set to mingle with Hollywood luminaries at the home of the president of the MGM Motion Picture Group, Jonathan Glickman.

The race for cash in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary is reaching a frenetic peak this weekend with a dozen fund-raisers on both coasts, as presidential hopefuls rush to vacuum up $2,800 checks — the maximum amount individuals can give for the primary by law — before the first quarterly fund-raising deadline of the campaign at midnight on Sunday.

But the candidates don’t want to discuss any of this.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The unfortunately reality of our political system

(if it can even be called a "system" ) is that you need a shit-ton of money to win an election, and while they all like to talk about raising money only from small individual donors, the fact is that the big bucks come from the bundlers and the PACs. So they have to decide whether it will be possible to raise enough money without the big-buck donors in order to preserve their image of not being beholden to the fat cats, or whether they take the big donations because know they can't pull it off otherwise. It's a ridiculous state of affairs but there it is.

[empedocles]

3. Candidate have to face realities - purists can be righteous.

[Skidmore]

2. Donors are not the issue.

We need candidates with integrity who listen to the entity of their constituency, some of which are businesses. There is a balance to be struck and we damned well better figure it out. Purity tests in this area right now mean little until laws are changed.