The Central Tabulator

August 11, 2008

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

(CNN) — Barack Obama’s campaign manager said Monday John McCain’s now-famous Pairs Hilton/Britney Spears television ad wasn’t just insulting to the Illinois senator, but to his campaign’s legion of supporters as well.

And in an e-mail to those supporters Monday, campaign manager David Plouffe is hoping a backlash from that television spot will push Obama over the two million individual donor mark by the party’s convention at the end of August — only six months after the campaign topped one million donors.

“While supporters like you are out knocking on doors, registering new voters, and organizing in your local communities, our opponents are not even trying to match your efforts. Instead, they’re spending millions to spread the smear that Barack is just a ‘celebrity’ and that our grassroots movement is just a bunch of mindless fans,” Plouffe wrote in the e-mail in what is one of his harshest assessments to date of McCain’s ‘Celebrity’ ad.

“Two million donors is an incredible number — a number that was previously unimaginable for presidential campaigns,” he also wrote. “And it’s a number this campaign never dreamed we could reach before the convention.” Source Article