Election 2008 First Quarter Fundraising Results

OK, so now I know why I was getting email bombarded by the Presidential 2008 hopefulls all last week (Hillary Clinton was on a ROLL!). The first quarter campaign finance deadline was looming and now their TubeMogul viewership peak trend makes sense to me, duh...

Now I can't find a cool politubing video explaining the results. If anyone has one, comment away. But this is my take:

Hillary Clinton (What Hill?): $26 million
Barack Obama (Barack oBAM!a): $25 million
Mitt Romney (Mitt I've-got-tons-of-roMONEY): $23 million
Rudy Giuliani (Rudy apparently-not-enough-jewels-IANI): $15 million
John Edwards (President McDreamy is just too fitting, isn't it?): $14+ million
John McCain (John McCan't): $12.5

The Washington Post has a good article about these campaign fundraising results.

I don't know why they need 20 gagillion dollars but if I were a betting lady (and I'm not, I always lose miserably), my money is on Barack oBAMa or Mitt roMoney. Now I am completely unqualified to pass judgment but out of curiosity I looked up who was essentially running John McCain's campaign versus Mitt Romney. My intuition told me McCain is probably using old school political network methods, and Mitt Romney has whiz-bang kid. I mean, this is the founder of BainCapital. Hello...he knows money, as my husband says "Why was it a surprise he could raise money?"

Please, do not quote me but as I understand according to Chris Cilliza from the Washington Post, John McCain's campaign man is Tom Loeffler.

I don't know if they're the same role but one of Mitt Romney's main men is Alex Castellanos. Oh, and apparently the ivory tower word for these savants is "consigliere". Doesn't that just mean "an advisor", why the heck don't they just call them advisors? They must get to wear special tights or a crown or something.

Funny thing is I see Mr. Loeffler mentioned as a consigliere but Mr. Castellanos as I think a strategist. I also read and probably just juicy unfounded gossip that Romney's campaign wants to shy away from anything France-like as they will play the card that people like Hillary Clinton want us to just become a whiny socialist country like France (ca n'est pas possible) so maybe that's why Havana boy is media-guru and Loeffler is still a consiglieremajig.

So the difference in the two:
Tom Loeffler, an ex-Texas Congressman, a lawyer and lobbyist, and obviously politically tremendously well connected. Maybe he's not anymore after this week, who knows. I read this as “old school”.

Alex Castellanos - Media mogul-type man. Not sure how to read this since he’s been the political go-to guy for many but sounds FLASHY to me.

But way more interesting than Castellanos (for me at least) is Mitt Romney's apparent use of SalesForce.com for his campaign fundraising toolset:

Salesforce.com gets into politics by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign has raised about $20 million so far in 2007 with the help of “com-Mitt” software for interacting (fundraising) with donors. The activity is otherwise known as CRM, customer relationship management, and salesforce.com's on demand platform is the foundation of com-Mitt. Not one to miss a new, and timely, market opportunity, [...]

Now THERE's a businessman for ya!

Anyway, in my peace and love world, I would collect all the money that the candidates who don't stand a chance collected (why on God's green earth did MORE candidates just make a bid for the presidency??? ), plus the extra gazillion these guys collected, and maybe help pay off our national debt, help our little planet with its fever-thing, make sure our kids don't come butt-last in all areas of education, or make a really pretty park somewhere.

I'm probably not going to be anyone's consigliagagaga anytime soon…

Presidential Candidates - 2008 "Final Four"

Here is some analysis that's helping me narrow my March Madness Final Four, er, Six...

TubeMogul Stats
Republican YouTube views March 2007
(I know, numbers are hard to see, basically Romney was ahead and the total views of any given day of the three combined was around 9K - nothing to write home about I tell ya)


TubeMogul Stats
Democrats YouTube views March 2007
Barrack so out skews this graph it seems just plain silly. TechPresident had thought something was going crazy with his views so don't quote me on these...but if it's right, wow...



So I'm on the phone with my dad telling him I've started a blog (a "wha?"). Anyway, I tell him it's about watching online videos about the Presidential candidates. And he says, "You mean the 2008 election, you have a ways to go no?" Then I say, "Well, not really, you know how now you go into Target right after 4th of July and you start seeing Halloween stuff with the Christmas tree lights in the back? It's like that". I absolutely know where he's coming from but I have to tell you, it's way too late if you start thinking of this stuff by that time. You should basically be in your "Final Four" mode right now if you want to matter diddly squat.

I'm in California and they moved the primaries to I think February. Here you also have to be registered for the party (as I remember) to even be able to vote for a candidate for that party. So I figure I have to do my homework, pick a candidate, register for that party so that I can even vote him/her to be a candidate and then maybe sit back and relax. Because at least in this state, as much as we would like to consider ourselves individuals, the Nov 2008 election, is not as critical the "before" stuff. This notion needs to be more publicized I think. People are just waiting before the final exam and frankly, it's usually too late.

With that in mind, unless I see something just truly amusing, I'm going to stick to watching the top six candidates and what they have to say. No doubt someone is going to argue with me but really, cmon, I'll be the first to be seriously amused if this isn't the list (in no order): Dems: Clinton, Edwards, Obama. Reps: Giuliani, Romney, McCain. I'm just guessing of course.

Fun little heavy hitters Republican vs Democrats comparison, Romney vs. Obama (it's not even fun watching this...). Now keep in mind, Romney has 66 videos posted as of today and Obama has 26.

Rudy Giuliani's "A Proven Record"

Here is the quintessential New Yorker, discussing his proven record. Now I liked Rudy (we're on a first name basis of course) during 9-11 and I've been to New York before and after Time Square was Disneyland and frankly I like Disneyland better than the scary ghetto drug thing it was way back before he was mayor. The very few New York friends I have did have positive things to say about Mayor Giuliani so right away, even though I'm a little leery of his ability to make good personal judgement calls, I'll keep watching. What I'll be watching for are signs of pig-headed stubbornness. That's my major beef with our current President (and I voted Republican plenty of times so back off, I'm still very much a down-the-middle person). I can appreciate someone following their conviction, but sometimes your conviction may have drank someone else's Kool-aid a little too hard and it's OK to take a step back and hear what everyone else has to say.

I don't think you can be President if you're not first of all, absolutely a Type A, and secondly, somewhat enchanted by the personal fame. And that's totally OK. But I'll want a President that has enough Type A in them to get the job done, but not so enthralled with himself that he forgets who his/her boss is (we may be tiny but we're many damnit!).

So Mr. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the way I "saw'r" it, keep it real, take it down a notch on some issues, and keep making me believe you'll do a better job running our country that some of your personal affairs and I'll keep watching.

This was a good politubing video in my opinion. Got his points across, not overedited, not politube contrived, and for whatever it's worth, he may be a good spokesperson, but he made me believe him. So I'll say thumbs up.