By Susan Duclos
The headline is the obvious question after reading about major Barack Obama donors rewarding Hillary Clinton for her loyal service to Obama by paying off her 2008 presidential campaign debts last year.
Last week campaign disclosure reports revealed that Hillary Clinton had finally retired the debt from her 2008 presidential campaign—with a little help from the guy who beat her, Barack Obama. Clinton’s debt once totaled more than $20 million, although it had dwindled to about $250,000 by last year. That’s when a team of top Obama donors decided to surprise Clinton, and thank her for her loyal service, by raising enough money to pay off her bills. As secretary of state, she was forbidden from political fundraising.
The effort was apparently launched by Steve Spinner, a California finance chairman for the Obama campaign; Jane Stetson, the former Democratic National Committee finance chairwoman; and Henry Munoz, the incoming DNC finance chairman.
Details:
The team found them by assigning an intern to comb through the records at OpenSecrets.org and see who still had room to give. In the end, it took the checkbooks of about 120 people and several months to retire the debt—I’m told the last check arrived in early July. And as it turned out, the Obama folks substantially overshot the mark. Clinton’s campaign, which has not yet formally been shut down, now shows a surplus of about $205,000.
Then we have the warm and fuzzy "60 Minutes" soft-ball interview with Obama and Clinton, according to CBS' Steve Kroft, was suggested by the White House.
Is everybody "Ready for Hillary" to run in 2016? From 2009 to November 2012, Hillary had completely ruled out the option in multiple interviews, yet in the 60 Minutes interview, the answer has changed considerably to " I think that, you know, look, obviously the president and I care deeply about what’s going to happen for our country in the future. And I don’t think, you know, either he or I can make predictions about what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next year."
In politics, nothing is free and done out of the goodness of a politican's heart, so exactly what did Hillary do or what has she agreed to do for Obama?
Would she have agreed not to run against his record, despite the data from the latest quarterly reports from the St. Louis fed, showing that the Obama recovery is now officially the worst recovery in US history?
If so, it was a very bad deal.
