There are a lot of reasons why Obama’s fundraising lags Romney’s. It’s always harder to govern than campaign, Fox viewers have been thoroughly brainwashed into seeing the Kenyan Socialist and his National Healthcare Takeover as A Major Threat To Our Democracy, Wall Street is too narcissistic to realize they’re not in jail because of Obama, and instead see him as ungrateful for their past beneficence. Also, a lot of voters are quite blatantly racist.
Finally, a lot of the people who trusted him to make things better feel betrayed. They thought he would punish the banks, stop the Bush assaults on privacy and human rights, and stop the economic cascade of mortgage foreclosures. Not only didn’t it happen, he started trying to trade away Social Security and Medicare, all in the name of bipartisanship – something Grover Norquist told us long ago was “date rape.”
But at some point, bitterly disappointed voters still have to make a decision. Do they hold back support from someone they no longer see as a friend, knowing it will result in the election of someone they do know is their enemy? It’s a tough decision:
In the battle for political cash, President Obama is finding himself in an unaccustomed place during the final months of the 2012 campaign: he is losing.
Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee easily outraised the formidable Obama money machine for the second month in a row. A nonstop schedule of high-dollar events around the country brought in $106 million during June to Mr. Obama’s $71 million, giving him and his party four times the cash on hand that it had just three months ago.
Mr. Obama’s fund-raising deficit in part reflects how steeply the terrain has shifted since 2008, when many Republican donors embraced the candidate and his campaign raised millions of dollars from Wall Street and other traditionally right-leaning industries. Now those donors are swinging hard back to the Republican Party — and to Mr. Romney, whose promise to curtail regulation and cut taxes has helped draw a torrent of five-figure checks.
In a worrisome development for the Obama campaign, Mr. Romney, who until now has been heavily dependent on donors giving the maximum federal contribution, also showed success in June drawing small donors, a traditional strength of the Obama campaign. Reflecting the intensifying general election matchup with Mr. Obama and conservative anger over the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the president’s signature health care law, Mr. Romney raised about a third of his total in checks of under $250, officials said on Monday. Mr. Romney and the R.N.C. now have about $160 million in cash.
“This month’s fund-raising is a statement from voters that they want a change of direction in Washington,” Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s finance chief, said in a statement.
Well, yes. I think that’s true, but not in the way Mr. Zwick says. I believe if more Democrats saw the president acting like he was on our side – indicting bankers, telling the Republicans to go to hell the next time they play debt ceiling games, and announce he will not pursue his Grand Bargain, why, they might be more interested in laying out some cash to support their team.
Call it a hunch.
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