One of the biggest questions about the 2012 election is whether or not Republicans will be able to use post-Citizens United corporate money to counter what will otherwise be a big fundraising advantage for Obama:
President Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee together raised a whopping $86 million in the second quarter of 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina announced in an early morning web video sent to supporters.
Obama’s re-election campaign collected $47 million while the president raised another $38 million for the DNC via a joint fundraising committee that allows donors to write a single check that is then divvied up between the two entitites.
The haul far surpasses the goal Messina set for the campaign’s national finance committee of collecting a combined $60 million between April 1 and June 30.
“It’s a monumental achievement,” Messina said.
Obama’s total is more than the $35 million all the Republican presidential candidates combined raised this past quarter.
Valdivia
I guess this means he has lost all his supporters?
Carol
That’s truly huge. OFA alone raised 47 million.
Needless to say, Obama can just keep accumulating a big pile and sit on it until he has to spend it later this year. This is one of the advantages of being an incumbent President who is well-liked by his base.
So much for that “Primary Obama” meme. Jane. No other Dem can even begin to raise that kind of money in what would inevitably be a losing cause. Time to think up an instant third Party, which will also lose just as badly.
rob!
Can’t Obama go to the soulless sacks of crap that are the leaders of corporate America and remind them that the opposition was/is about to default the U.S. economy? As much as the Wall Street psychopaths don’t like Obama, you’d think seeing how crazy the GOP has gotten would scare them more.
Valdivia
@rob! #3
I think he did, wasn’t there an article John or DougJ linked to about fundraising there? Then again the Galtian Lords just want to eliminate all regulations so they don’t seemingly care if they have to put up with the crazy to get it.
Keith G
It’s Obama, so I guess I should like this, but this is one of the larger dark spots on the soul of America. I guess we will never get big money out of our campaigns and that will increasingly skew our politics until it finally runs us aground.
Linda Featheringill
I saw an article with the fund raising figures. Warms my heart.
I’m glad to see that some of this goes to the national organization. It would be good to have LOTS of advertising in representative races.
And Valdivia, you’re quite correct. This proves that Obama has lost his base.
:-)
Danny
WPost.
stuckinred
I posted this over on some other blog and asked how their primary effort was going.
Valdivia
@Linda #6
yep, I think that primary is looking lik a total success! ;)
@stuckinred mindmeld!
Danny
@stuckinred
No prob, I’m sure Queen Jane recruited a couple of thousand new Gosprey Circle members. The loyal insurrection is alive and well.
wvng
Rob!, business/stock market generally does better under Dem administrations. That is empirically true. But they think they do worse because of all those terrible regulations and taxes, so they vote for republicans.
alwhite
@rob! #3
But I bet the masters of the universe know the default disaster would not even be a possibility if there was a Republican in the WH. The Dems are still in a lose-lose situation there despite all the ass kissing many of them are doing. No matter how soft & sweet the Dems lips are the MOtU KNOW they really get some tongue from the Republicans.
agrippa
I have a real problem with money being so important in political campaigns. Citizens United was a very bad ruling. It is tantamount to legal bribery.
But, I am glad that Obama has money.
He has not lost me as a supporter. He is a calm and sensible man. Both are assets in a president.
Linda Featheringill
agrippa #13
[Obama]
Yes. Wonderful assets in a president. In a candidate? Maybe, maybe not.
Pococurante
A tough week for the firebaggers.
How sad for them.
MikeJ
@Linda Featheringill:
Worked great last time. When he looks calm he looks presidential.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ – now he’s just aloof and out of touch as he lectures instead of connects with an audience. Or so they say…again and again and again.
ET
I guess big money guys may be giving money to the PACs but possibly not as much to the individual candidates – especially after the debt ceiling talks.
If I were an individual Republican candidate I would be worried about fundraising for myself. No amount of tea party money can beat some big donations from people with big money.
rob!
I can’t believe there any any businesstards left to donate to the GOP since they now have to do stuff like this.
They simply must see the GOP has been taken over by complete lunatics, and lunatics are bad for business. I don’t expect them to like Obama (or any Dem), but…
WereBear
Being “businesspeople” (and they deserve every pixel of my air quote contempt) they want it both ways. They always want things both ways.
HRA
The more sensible of the GOPers will not vote for any lunatics. I know from past experience of once being one of those GOPers.
On the other hand I have to daily contend with a very loquacious co-worker who continues to be insulted over the majority of the office being liberals. It must be said that for the 25 years I worked in another section I never heard anyone talk politics. Now I am getting an overload of it almost every hour on the hour. I even took the day of today to get some relief. Help!! :))
Chris
Amazing how thin-skinned they are.
PJMedia had an article up yesterday in which one of their readers wrote a letter asking for advice on how to deal with the smugness and contempt when you’re around liberals, and got mini-therapy session for his trouble. I suspect he/she was simply living in a non-liberal place for the first time and couldn’t beat the thought that different people existed in such close proximity. I’ve met conservatives like that before, often here in DC, with people who crawl out of Southern or Midwestern all-white, all-Christian, all-conservative cocoons.
El Cid
I heard from a former McCain campaign director on Rachel Maddow (s.o. else can look her up) that any campaign just hates outside money coming in because they can’t control them.
Therefore it won’t happen for Republicans, because it just won’t, because all the campaigns will get unhappy faces.
El Cid
__
The GOP voted against the first (morning) TARP vote, and had to encounter some sort of mysterious, invisible pressure throughout the day. Conspiracy theorists such as myself might have thought it could involve Wall Street financial honchos, but I wouldn’t dare suggest that without each Congressman’s videotaped testimony about exactly who called who and when and said exactly what.
Somehow, though, they decided to vote for it in the afternoon. (They also learned that Pelosi wasn’t going to let more Democrats vote for it than would require the GOP to contribute a majority of Republicans as well.)
You’d think that a bill that Mr. Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson was on his knees begging Pelosi to pass the TARP would anger the bidness communiteee against the party which voted it down.
No.
bob h
I have this fantasy that Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and other billionaires will create a super-PAC devoted to restoring sanity to the American Congress.
Trinity
@bob h: Excellent fantasy.
burnspbesq
@bob h:
I tend to doubt that their idea of what it means to “restore sanity” would bear any resemblance to yours. Or mine.
Nice fantasy, but I think my fantasy of waking up next to Hope Solo tomorrow morning has a larger chance of coming true.
boss bitch
Just wait until the attacks on Obama get much nastier and more frequent. This will seem like chump change.
grandpajohn
Tell him to move to SC and try being a white liberal in the environment here then I might take pity on his whining ass
grandpajohn
maybe he should move down here to SC then he could fit right with the conservatives and get a lesson in the fine art of how smug arrogant contempt is performed by experts.