Last week Clinton posted on her campaign website the names of 122 "bundlers" who raised at least $100,000 for her campaign in the second quarter. These included corporate lobbyists for Dow Chemical, Microsoft, Exxon, PepsiCo, Verizon and MasterCard, among many, many others. The identity of one "bundler" is telling: Steven Rattner, the investment banker who headed Obama's auto task force that imposed 50 percent pay cuts on newly hired autoworkers.
Clinton's main challenger, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, has no super PAC but raised $15.2 million anyway, mainly over the Internet. He actually raised more money than Clinton from small donors, those who gave less than $200. This shows that Sanders is performing his assigned function: using anti-billionaire rhetoric (which includes refusing to have a super PAC), to attract those disaffected by the right-wing policies of the Obama administration, and bringing them back into the orbit of the Democratic Party.
This entire process has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy. It shows how the US financial aristocracy manipulates public opinion, seeking to preserve the illusion of popular choice in the presidential election behind the most transparent of fig leaves. In the meantime, the billionaires will put the candidates through their paces, selecting the individual they will install in the White House to do their bidding.
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