by Susie
Not good news, especially if Romney is the nominee and sucks up the Wall Street cash. (No wonder he’s got that old time Super PAC religion now.)
You don’t suppose the president is desperate enough to, oh, I don’t know, do stuff to help plain old working people that will inspire them to contribute to his campaign, do you? I guess we’ll see:
President Obama is struggling to draw in big-dollar donations, with half as many people writing large checks to his campaign than at this point four years ago.
Obama is outpacing his Republican rivals in fundraising overall, and his advisers have concentrated on amassing small-dollar backers, part of a strategy to get more people invested in the reelection effort. At the end of January, 1.4 million people had donated to the Obama campaign, responding to appeals for contributions as small as $2.
But Obama lags behind Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in finding donors willing to give $2,000 or more — a surprising development for a sitting president, and one that could signal more worrisome financial problems heading into the general election. At this point in the last election cycle, Obama had received such large donations from more than 23,000 supporters, more than double the 11,000 who have given him that much this time. President George W. Bush had more than four times that number of big donations at this point in his reelection.
Democrats see a variety of possible explanations for such a dramatic drop in big-dollar contributions. The ailing economy has dampened fundraising overall. Some wealthy liberals and Wall Street executives alike have grown disaffected with the president over time. And the extended Republican primary has shined a spotlight on a field of potential rivals that many Democrats believe Obama will easily beat.
“Some people think these Republicans are easy marks, and they aren’t taking it as seriously as they need to yet,” said Judy Wise, one of Obama’s “bundlers,” the campaign term for people who host events and gather checks from other donors.
Whatever the reason, Obama appears to be redoubling his efforts to extract bigger contributions from his support base. He has stepped up his fundraising events in recent weeks, taking swings through several different regions for more than 40 events in 2012. On Friday, the president did five events in two states with an expected haul of at least $5.5 million.
Wow. Obama was so very solicitous of the needs and desires of the Big Banksters, albeit the hedgies did not get quite so much lovin’ kindness, but, sitll, overall FIRE got more than they deserved, perhaps more than they even expected.
Obama came through for them more than a Republican president could have done with a Democratic Congress. And he gets this kind of treatment? Heh.
I imagine he was not expecting to be kicked to the curb quite so soon by the ungrateful criminal kleptocrats he so assiduously kept from even being investigated, much less prosecuted.
Gee, maybe he chose the wrong horses for this race….
Too bad he sold out so very many of the Democratic party base, so many of the lower income percentiles of any and all political leanings. Too bad he screwed over the Constitution. To get…bupkus?
You highlighted the key question: who is the Obama “support base?” FIIK
Them’s the wages of triangulation. Its nice that at least he notices the absence of wealthy liberals. Me, I’m just a piker professional lefty. He won’t notice my absence till I vote Green Party on election day.