On Melissa Hart's Charge

As I posted here, Melissa Hart has gone on record saying that Senator Obama has given $10,000 to the campaign of Congressman Jason Altmire. And that's why he wasn't endorsing Senator Clinton.

There's even a webpage to prove it (many thanks to that long-haired hippie freak Bill Toland for sending me the link).

For the record, as of this writing, Congressman Altmire hasn't endorsed anyone.

I took a look at the page and a couple of things hit me. First was this:

These current and former elected officials received campaign contributions from either Obama or Clinton in the 2006 and/or 2008 election cycles.

It's right at the top of the page. But wait a second. I thought that the money was supposed to be some sort of recent payoff to a superdelegate in exchange for an endorsement NOW. How could either campaign know in 2006 that an endorsement might be needed?

Then I went hunting in here. As far as I could tell, nothing said "Obama" on it.

So how did Capitaleye get to the $10,000?

A little more digging got me to this page. Which got me to this one. At that page, we read:

Obama, who narrowly leads in the count of pledged, "non-super" delegates, has doled out more than $698,200 to superdelegates from his political action committee, Hope Fund, or campaign committee since 2005.

Now we're getting somewhere. It's called the "Hope Fund." And, indeed, there are three contributions worth a total of $10,000 to Congressman Altmire from the Hope Fund.

• The first, for $2500, was made just before the 2006 election and dated November 1 of 2006.
• The second, for $5000 was dated from the middle of last year, on June 15, 2007
• The third, for $2500 was dated from last September 25, 2007.

Ms Hart's implication is that there's a quid pro quo in play here. An issue I would think she'd shy away from, considering she took $15,000 from Tom Delay's PAC before being installed on the House Ethics Committee that should have been investigating The Hammer. But that's just me. Can someone explain how in September of 2007 where USA/Gallop poll said they were trailing 47% to 25% the Obama PAC would know that they'd need to shell out some cash for an superdelegate endorsement fight in April of 2008? Or June of '07 when they were down 39% to 26%? Or November of 2006 before Jason Altmire was even elected?

Geez, they must be real smart. Either that or this whole line of reasoning is real dumb.

Hey, do you know who else got some Hope Fund cash?

That's right, Senator Hillary Clinton - way back in 2005. As they say, Early Money Is Like Yeast. Senator Clinton got $2100 in February, 2005, and another $2100 the following March. How much do you think that $4200 would go if Senator Obama were to call her to ask her to get out of the race?

Something more. On those same dates (2/28/05 and 3/29/05), the Hope Fund also gave the same amounts to Connecticut's favorite Senator, Joe Lieberman.

Maybe Obama should call and ask him to stop helping Senator McCain's campaign so much.

I mean a quid pro quo is a quid pro quo.