The Obama campaign has made quite a big deal of John McCain’s campaign contributions from Big Oil than and the Democratic National Committee even created an Exxon-McCain site.
Unfortunately, while the overall charge is true (if silly, as discussed here) it turns out that Obama has actually netted more money from Exxon employees. ABC’s Jake Tapper:
Obama has received more campaign cash than McCain has from the employees of some of the biggest oil companies — Exxon, Chevron and BP.
This might seem to complicate Obama’s continual use of Exxon-Mobil on the stump.
Now, in fairness, the amounts in question here are trivial in the scope of campaigns bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars and the deltas are small, indeed. Further, the examples Tapper gives are of Obama’s questioning McCain’s policy proposals and their benefits to Exxon-Mobile, not charges that he’s in their pocket. To the extent they were accurate to begin with, the fact that the company’s employees gave slightly more to Obama is irrelevant.
Then again, as Mike Allen notes, there are more embarrassing examples.
The campaign reinforces a new ad by Barack Obama in which the announcer says: “Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with two million dollars in contributions. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley will announce the campaign at DNC headquarters in Washington. “The oil industry was so generous with its campaign largesse,” a party official says, “John McCain has not only put Exxon on the ticket — but he has graciously stepped aside and is allowing Exxon … to run at the top of the ticket.”If the governor needs to check his tires, he can stop off at the RNC, a couple of blocks away.
TigerHawk‘s response to all this is well taken.
Of course, it is a little unfair to tag Obama with the contributions of employees of one company or another. He has no control over where people work, and many people do not believe that their interests as citizens correspond with the interests of their employer.
He continues, to paraphrase James Carville, it’s the policy stupid:
Barack Obama has attacked the profitability of my industry [health care], he has insulted my job (“corporate chieftain”), he vows to enact regulations that will make my job massively more difficult, and he promises to confiscate a much higher proportion of my income (raising my marginal tax rate by approximately 17%). Wild horses could not drive me to give money to his campaign even if I agreed with him on foreign policy (which I do not). I do not need social respectability nearly as much as I enjoy self-respect, and I imagine I would also feel that way if I worked for ExxonMobil.
Still, given the reaction of Obama’s supporters to the giving disparity, this new revelation is rather amusing.
Jim Geraghty snarks, “I guess he can re-run that silly ad that brags that he takes no money from oil companies… just like every other candidate for federal office.” He headlines his post “Time to Create an Exxon-Obama Site.“
Jeff Dobbs says he doesn’t have time to create the whole site but he’s offered up a logo:
Only three more months of this!
