According to a new piece out today from the New York Times, the Obama campaign is becoming more insistent and frequent in requests for cash from supporters. This marks a stark change from 2008 when the Obama campaign had more cash than it knew what to do with.
Report from the New York Times:
Each plea for money from President Obama and his allies has become more urgent and desperate than the last.
His campaign’s chief operating officer said on Monday that “we’ve gotten our behinds handed to us.”
Vice President Joe Biden warned on the same day that Mr. Obama would lose if “the other side spends us into oblivion.”
Michele Obama worried aloud about waking up on election day “wondering if I could have done more.” And Al Gore, the former vice president, said victories by the “extremist fringe” would “spell disaster” for the country.
The answer, according to all of them? A donation of $3 (or more) by midnight on Tuesday. (The e-mails don’t say “Pretty please!” — yet.)
The urgent and repeated appeals, sent to millions of Mr. Obama’s supporters via e-mail and text messages, are a vivid reminder that the president’s campaign is likely to raise significantly less than Mitt Romney and Republicans for the third month in a row in July.
As more evidence of the fundraising gap, the Obama campaign recently put out a video of the President donating to his own campaign as a sort of “how-to” for willing donors, report on this from Politico:
President Obama has given $5,000 to his own reelection campaign, an official confirms to POLITICO.
In an email to supporters this morning, Obama said that he had given to his own reelection campaign for the first time as a symbolic gesture.
“On its own, what I gave won’t be enough to surmount the unprecedented fundraising we’ve seen on the other side, both from our opponent’s campaign and from the outside groups and special interests supporting him,” Obama wrote. “But we have always believed that there’s nothing we can’t do when we all pitch in. That includes me.”
Clearly the Obama campaign fundraising numbers aren’t adding up to what they think will be needed to fend off impending Romney attacks beginning this month. The Romney campaign has been limited in spending large amounts on advertising early on, instead choosing to withhold the brunt of the attacks for the time closer to Election Day.
On the other hand, the Obama campaign has spent large amounts already on the Romney/Bain attack ads among other things.
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