Obama’s Fundraising Machine in Trouble?

[Ulli]

Obama’s Fundraising Machine in Trouble?

Filed under: 2008 elections — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on September 9, 2008 @ 12:00 pm CEST

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The Drudge Report, one of the leading news websites in the world - the place where journalists everywhere go to find out what is happening in the United States - reported on Tuesday that Barack Obama may not reach the ‘ambitious fundraising target’ he set for himself.

Instead of directly linking to the story, however, Drudge simply ran a one sentence newsflash. This indicated that the people behind Drudge - Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart - were aware that something would be printed in the New York Times (Drudge indicated that something about this would appear in that newspaper), but that the article itself was not yet available online. The NYT, in other words, probably informed Drudge that a big article was about to get published; newspapers do this more often with Drudge. After all, one link at Drudge may be worth a million (or more) visits.

This morning the NYT published its article and, it seems, Obama’s fundraising machine - which performed so well only a few months ago - may be in trouble.

Earlier this year the campaign decided not to accept public funding. The decision was inspired by the record breaking fundraising numbers they had assembled in the preceeding months. Obama, it was believed, would not need public funding. In fact, the McCain argued, public funding - with all its restrictions - would limit the campaign effort considerably.

At the end of August and start of September, however, the campaign started to regret their decision. A sign of the changing attitude in Obama land was an e-mail a finance staffer sent to Illinois members of its national finance committee. In it the staffer called the fundraising efforts of this committee “extremely anemic,” urging them to do more to help Obama break even more records.

Another sign of the ‘urge to raise funds’ was something that happened at a convention-week meeting in Denver. Buttons ‘with the image of a money tree were distributed to those who had already contributed the maximum $2,300 to the general election, a subtle reminder to those who had failed to ante up.’

Obama’s fundraising machine is struggling. The main reason for this is that Hillary Clinton’s supporters have donated far less than the Obama campaign expected. They expected the party to unite behind the nominee. However, Clinton’s supporters seem unwilling to embrace the man who beat their woman. Instead of getting actively involved on the side of the Democratic Party they remain on the sidelines, watching the Obama ship slowly going down.

Although the Obama campaign said it has raised more in August than in any other month thus far, this is not much of a reconciliation for two reasons:

1. They have to raise considerably more because they do not accept public funding

2. They are spending many millions more on advertisement than Senator John McCain. This while the RNC and the McCain campaign combined had more cash on hand at the end of July than the DNC and the Obama campaign.

Additionally, McCain seems to have found his voice and energized the Republican Party. In the first four days after Sarah Palin gave her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, the GOP received $10 million. A sign, it could very well be, of things to come.

Spokesman for the Obama campaign David Plouffe remains publicly calm, however. “We’re confident that we will meet our financial goals, but it’s hard work,” Mr. Plouffe said. “We have a long way to go in the next six weeks.”

True or not, what is clear is that Obama will have to spend considerable time raising money in the coming months, when he could also have gone out on the streets to talk to average Americans. In other words, campaigning. McCain, on the other hand, has only planned four fundraisers for himself, while his running mate Sarah Palin will attend 35 over the next two months. Most of the fundraising will be done by Palin and the GOP as a whole, not by McCain.

Obama, however, will have to do it by himself. Biden may be a good politician, but he is not the kind of running mate who encourages people to give $10 million in four days time.

It could very well be that Obama will have less money to spend, in the end, than McCain; McCain’s decision to accept federal funding suddenly seems to have become an advantage. He will be able to keep up with Obama, possibly outperform him with the help of the GOP.

Another aspect of raising money should be taken into consideration by the Democrats; the more you push people to donate money, the less supportive of your campaign and the less willing to give they may become. People do not like to be asked for money time and again, especially not in a way that makes them feel that the money they did give is not appreciated (as was the message with the buttons).

Source: http://poligazette.com/2008/09/09/obamas-fundraising-machine-in-trouble/