(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - US President Barack Obama's re-election campaign has set a goal of raising approximately 60 million dollars in the last quarter of the year.
Bringing in around 70 million dollars in the third quarter, the campaign is expected to raise more than 200 million dollars in 2011.
The money will be used for the incumbent president's 2012 re-election campaign as well as the Democratic National Committee.
We have conducted an interview with Ian Williams of the Foreign Policy in Focus in New York to further discuss the issue of the American electoral system and its opportunistic relationship with the US economy and society.
The following is a rush transcription of the interview.
Q: How do you assess Obama's re-election campaign, the issue of funds for the campaign, and also the targets that have been set for this year and the next.
Williams: Well, this is the best [example] of the gross distortions in American politics. Obama is going to get that money because he is going to be the next president, it's bloody likely.
To the few people who think he will not be the next president, they won't give that money.
And, of course, those people are giving that money because they expect returns from that money. So, they expect that he will poll-punch them on banking finance, that he will poll-punch on taxation and all the other issues.
American politics and campaign financing in most of Europe would be regarded as bribery, a criminal activity. But here it's taken for granted.
And people have forgotten that the democrats actually get a lot more money from business, in many ways, than the Republicans because the business people know that they can rely on the Republicans. But the Democrats they have to bribe into compliance.
Q: Obama's re-election doesn't seem to be a shoe in, does it? -Given the fact that many people are still grappling with unemployment and the aftermath of the financial crisis and the housing meltdown.
Williams: There are two things in his favor. One is that the people who are actually politically minded realize that he inherited this problem from Bush and, let's say, from Clinton beforehand - but certainly from Bush.
And the second thing is that the field of Republican candidates is so outrageously ignorant, self-serving and stupid that it's impossible to conceive that he would lose almost at the moment, unless the field changes.
Each of them taken separately has so many, how should we say, weak areas that will be attacked as they come. In fact, the weird thing about the American primary system is that their own party spends a year stabbing holes in the back of the candidates so that by the time the candidates are actually elected, he's had all of his other colleagues in the party shooting at him, stabbing holes in him, revealing faults in his past.
And then, of course, it goes to the general election. There the signs are that the independents, the people who sway the votes between the committed Republicans and Democrats, are very much against most of the current Republican field.
But they will need millions and millions of dollars of TV advertising to persuade them. And that's what this fundraising is all about.
This fundraising is going into TV adverts, or attacks the opposition to promote your candidate. It's one of the things.
One sometimes thinks that the American elections should really just prop up the amount of money involved and declare the one with the higher funds as the winner. It would save a lot of money and time for everybody.
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