Exxon’s candidate: Barack Who’s-Same Obama

The Center for Responsive Politics took a look at the candidates campaign contributions from employees of Exxon-Mobil (companies themselves are barred from donating).  Here’s what they found (ABC via Jim Geragthy):

Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain’s $35,166.

One of the Democrats’ unspoken campaign commercials was Exxon-Mobil’s latest earnings announcement ($11-billion-plus this quarter – CTV).  Yours truly particularly noted the difficulty of swimming against that tide.  The Audacity of Hype, of course, has been trying to label John McCain as the oil company candidate for months – and never mind the actual fact that he (Obama) voted for the president’s Big Oil/Big Corn fiasco that McCain opposed.

McCain was sure to remind voters of that (and surprisingly, so was ABC, emphasis added):

McCain himself has tried to push back against the Obama charge, telling votes at a town hall in Lima, Ohio, today, that he “spoke up against the Administration and Congress and Senator Obama when they gave us an energy bill with more giveaways to Big Oil and really no solution to our energy problems,” and Obama did not.

Discussing the 2005 energy bill, which passed the Senate overwhelmingly, McCain said “I think Senator Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday, he accused me of having President Bush’s policies on energy. That’s odd because he voted for the President’s energy bill and I voted against it. I voted against it, had $2.8 billion in corporate welfare to Big Oil companies, and they’re already making record profits, as you know. Senator Obama voted for that bill and its Big Oil giveaways. I know he hasn’t been in the Senate that long, but even in the real world, voting for something means you support it and voting against something means you oppose it.”

So, unless thr Audactity of Hype is looking to recycle John Kerry’s I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it line, he remains Barack Who’s-Same Obama