David Weigel writes for Reason:
Everyone was wondering how Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign would act if it started falling behind in the polls, and yesterday we got an answer: It would act completely ridiculous.
The gist is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both started leadership PACS after they got to the Senate, her in 2001, him in 2005. (Mickey Kaus alert: The first page of Hillpac disbursements are all to Huma Abedin.) Leadership PACs are the sort of things that expose campaign reform for the garbage it is: Spongy funds that can take $5000 donations and dole out more than the FEC limit of $2300 to federal office candidates. And they’re engines of political influence. Tom DeLay used his ARMPAC to help out House candidates early on, when they needed it, expecting them to support him in his leadership races and floor votes. Clinton and Obama helped out House and Senate candidates to build ties for their upcoming presidential races, break in staff for said races (before becoming the spokeswoman for Clinton ’08, Ann Lewis was the communications director of HillPAC), build direct mail networks.
