Arianna Talks About The Debt Ceiling Agreement With Lawrence O'Donnell (VIDEO)

Obama's 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina tried to claim in his video announcing the Q2 numbers that 98 percent of all donations were $250 or less, and the average contributi­on was $69 from around 550,000 contributo­rs. That gives the impression of a grassroots­-fueled army.

Messina didn’t say that these numbers excluded the DNC contributi­ons, mostly maxed-out $30,000 donations. And now, the fact of these bundlers complicate­s Messina’s narrative even more. It’s likely, given these numbers, that a portion of the under-$250 contributi­ons were collected by bundlers. I think we can say with confidence that bundlers aren’t going to “ordinary Americans” for those collection­s. They are rich elites who go to their rich elite friends.

In fact, Obama for America only cited less than half of their total contributi­ons – $21.4 million – as “unitemize­d,” meaning they were smaller than $200 donations that don’t need to be teamed with identifica­tion. You can pretty safely bet that almost no DNC Victory Fund donations were under $200. That would mean that 3/4 of all money collected by Obama for America and the DNC Victory Fund were through donations over $200. That syncs with the bundler data.

What we also don’t know is if a maxed-out donor who comes to an Obama/DNC victory event counts under the bundler who may have “hosted” that event. This will all come out as people dig through the FEC reports. But just what’s out already tells you a lot. You cannot possibly take in between $35-$50 million, if not much more, from bundlers and maxed-out donors, and claim to have a grassroots campaign.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost