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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Some commentator said that the Biden/Harris campaign can donate money to a PAC that could then """independently""" decide to run ads for whomever happens to be the Democratic nominee.

The other thing people aren’t aware of is large amounts of the money announced as raised isn’t going to the direct election fund. Even in the article that talks about 3.7 million raised between under 50 people. That doesn’t quite happen, it would be illegal. What happens is you cut a bundle check: you can give the individual max to the campaign, then again to the “primary” campaign, and then once again to each and every state DNC party. This means a single individual can give a total of a hundred thousand+ (forget the exact math), but crucially, only the ~5k or so is directly controlled by Biden-Harris.

Some commentator said that the Biden/Harris campaign can donate money to a PAC that could then """independently""" decide to run ads for whomever happens to be the Democratic nominee.

I would expect Dr. Jiil and Hunter to take an "over my dead body" approach to any attempt to divert that money out of their personal control. If they allow Biden to withdraw from the campaign, I would imagine that a good portion of his campaign funds will stick to him like glue.

Isn’t there a difference between a PAC and a super PAC? I thought the former had contribution limits but maybe I’m mistaken.

I'm sure there are ways around it, but it seems like a potential minefield for future lawfare if Trump/Paxton can find one disgruntled donor.

Keep in mind this is probably a losing campaign regardless.

Wouldn’t they need to find a plaintiff who donated to Biden but who was willing to sign on to a Paxton/Trump-favorable campaign? Seems unlikely.

There is almost certainly an intern at the RNC/Trump campaign who donated $1 to the Biden campaign to get immediate access to emails sent to donors.

Besides the straw donor possibility already raised by Mr. Nybs, and it wouldn't surprise me if both campaigns routinely arranged to have friends or relations donate to each other in order to scout info and engage in QC efforts.

Biden had well over one million donors back in March. Out of a group that big, one of them is gonna be weird. It's inevitable. People are weird. Somewhere in that million will be someone who loves Biden but hates Gretchen Whitmer for reasons so confusing as to be incomprehensible to rationality.

Wouldn’t they need to find a plaintiff who donated to Biden but who was willing to sign on to a Paxton/Trump-favorable campaign? Seems unlikely.

They could have a shill donate right now to preserve the case.

What’s the legal argument for why the Biden-Harris campaign can’t donate all its funds to the DNC, as somebody above suggested?

That commentator said doing this may start a legal battle. That isn't a fun or easy plan, but it may be possible.

I guess for me it's that Harris isn't a zero compared to Newsom or Whitmer. She's not, at this time, utterly unacceptable in the way Biden arguably is. So it's not, well we have to switch but there will be a legal battle but we have to. It's, well we can have Newsom who we rank a 54/100 or Harris who we rank a 48/100, but if we pick Newsom we might get shit about "passing over the woman/Negro/sitting veep" and we might get a bizarro lawsuit about the money and maybe we get an ugly/ier convention fight, so maybe we sand off those six points and stick with Harris. Especially given that they're probably going to lose, and probably going to face Ken Paxton in office with a mandate to settle scores.