While Bernie Was Talking About the Poor, Hillary Was Eating with the Rich - Protest at $350k dinner

[Scootaloo]

17. Actually, that's a campaign finance loophole.

In principle, donors are maxing out their donation to the candidate's campaign, then to the DNC, then to the State Parties. However, these donations are maxed out with one single check for the aggregate amount. prior to the 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC Supreme court decision (with Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy in the majority) these aggregate donations had a cap of $123,000 per calendar year, but since that decision, that's no longer the case.

in reality, these big fat checks are being placed into the hands of the campaign-controlled Clinton Victory Fund. Which doles out the funds to the DNC and State parties and individual campaigns at its own discretion. There is basically no oversight to make sure the monies are properly apportioned. The reality is that this creates a slush fund for the campaign from which the campaign may dip out some monies, at its own discretion, for the State parties, the DNC, or individual campaigns.

No one is really mystified by this. There's a big wink-wink-nudge-nudge act put on, while just giving a campaign a big check that everyone knows may or may not be properly apportioned outside that campaign. Actually SAYING that it's all going into a campaign slush fund would cause legal problems. But so long as you say it's an aggregate donation, and nobody checks up on it, it's all good. Everyone involved is aware of this - After all, it can't be hard to write separate checks for a candidate, for a national party, and for the state parties, and send them accordingly.

And since both parties benefit from it, and since candidates getting screwed by the practice get further isolated if they don't "play ball" there's no real energy to approach the issue, much less try to correct it.