Obama/DNC Raise A Combined $70,000,000
The Third Quarter was quite successful for President Obama and the Democratic Party:
The Obama Campaign and Democratic National Committee raised a combined nearly $70 million for the 2012 campaign from July through September, the groups reported today in an email to supporters.
Obama for America brought in $42.8 million, while the DNC banked $23.7 million, a campaign official told ABC News. The figures include transfers from the Obama Victory Fund, a joint account that funnels money to both groups.
All 17 fundraisers Obama attended during the quarter supported the fund, with the first $5,000 of an individual’s contribution going to the Obama Campaign and the rest, up to $30,800, going to the DNC.
Obama’s robust total, surpassing the campaign’s $55 million goal, reflects the continued effectiveness of his campaign money machine, and the advantages of incumbency to help turn out cash, all despite months of sagging poll numbers and flaring economic frustration.
While Obama did not best George W. Bush’s record $50.1 million raised in the same period in 2003, he demonstrated that he retains a solid and growing base of grassroots financial support.
More than 606,000 people donated to Obama in the third quarter, including 257,000 first-time donors. The campaign has now received contributions from nearly 1 million Americans so far this year.
“Getting to a million grassroots donors isn’t just a huge accomplishment this early in the campaign,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in the email to supporters. “It’s our answer to our opponents, the press, and anyone who wants to know whether the President’s supporters have his back.”
Many of those are small donors, giving $250 or less, according to numbers provided by the Obama Campaign. Of the 766,000 donations received in July, August and September combined, 98 percent were $250 or less, officials said. The average donation was $56.
And each of those donors can be solicited again. By the time the Republicans have settled on a nominee, Barack Obama is likely to have several hundred million, if not close to a billion, dollars in the bank and a fully funded nationwide ground operation. Don’t go measuring for drapes in the Oval Office just yet, Republicans.
I’m actually surprised the Democrats raised so little last quarter. When you take into account trust fund babies on the coasts and college students sending in their allowance monies the Democrats have an unlimited supply of funds. I for one was expecting them to raise at least $100 million in Q3. In any event, there’s little doubt that Obama will end up above a billion dollars in available funds. That doesn’t even include the value of favorable mass media coverage for him versus negative coverage of his opponent. When you factor in a divisive GOP primary contest and the human zombie element of the Democrat base (who’ll blindly vote to reelect Obama even as their jobs, homes and futures disappear) I’d say it’s more than even money that Obama will be reelected.
1.) Fund-raising is one of the only things BO has shown any competency in doing
2.) You think the cheeseball $3 donation/raffle for dinner with BO had anything to do with the donor base numbers and the % numbers?
Tsar2…
Do you understand the psychological concept of projection? If not you might want to do some research and some introspection. It’s funny that much of the discussion recently has been about how the Republicans will get in line behind Romney as he seals the deal. The big news this primary season is that the Teavangelicals are going to get roayally f’ed. Even after the 2010 mid-terms they can’t muster a credible candidate and the Republican establishment is going to get their “electable” guy…the guy whose turn it is…the guy that is Obama-lite.
So “… the human zombie element of the Democrat base (who’ll blindly vote to reelect Obama even as their jobs, homes and futures disappear)…” seems to apply to Republicans. Think about it some.
Oh-by-the-way…The Republicans crashed the economy in starting in ’07…at the end of the previous Republican administration the Dow was around 8000…today it’s over 11,000 and corporate profits are at an all-time high. My 401K has returned to pre-Bush Contraction levels, my Federal taxes are lower than during the previous Republican administration, and my firm is seeing more and more work coming through the door. We are even thinking of hiring to replace people we were forced to lay-off during the previous Republican administration. As I drive around this area I see more and more building all the time.
Nationwide we have been adding private sector jobs for well over a year. Unfortunately we have also been slashing public sector jobs. So this recovery is EXACTLY what Republicans want…shrinking government.
As always…the facts do not match your ideology.
I wonder what OBL thinks about that?
@Norm,
OBL would definitely fall into the “other things” as would assassinations of American citizens and a trigger-happy Predator finger. So you’ve got the extension of the Bush terrorist policies and truly awesome fund-raising. Anything else you want to put in the competency file?
Wow, it just seems so odd that all those rich Democrats are in favor of higher taxes on themselves, isn’t it, Tsar?
While you’re at it, also please explain why the Dow went in the pooper before Obama was elected.
Now excuse me…I…must…donate…to…my…master…
Actually Obama has not extended the torture aspect of the Bush policies…which as far as anyone can tell is the key element…at least that’s what the Bushies like to brag about…so you are not completely accurate on that.
Bush left a job market shedding 600,000 jobs a month…today we are adding private sector jobs monthly and shedding public sector jobs…as I mentioned above…Obama is presiding over the recovery that Republicans want…so thats a major bi-partisan accomplishment.
The auto industry is back on their feet instead of collapsing and taking a couple million jobs with them.
We have health care reform…which Presidents from both sides of the aisle have been trying to accomplish for 50 years…so there’s that.
He passed the bigest tax cut in history…so there’s that.
He has decimated Al Qaida leadership…mostly through law enforcement…which the Bushies explicitly rejected in favor of military action.
Gays have far more rights today that when Obama took over the Presidency.
Once you take off your ideological blinkers the list of accomplishments is pretty long…in terms of economics, in terms of national security, in terms of individual rights…we are better off than we were 4 years ago. That cannot be argued.
Given the total shit-storm the guy was left…the worst economy since the depression, two unfinished wars, and a Republican caucus that is only intrested in obstruction and to this day votes against things they actually support…I’d give the guy a solid B grade. To imagine any of the 27 people on the Republican debate stage could have done any better in the same circumstance is to indulge in pure delusion.
Of course he has. He’s maintained Guantanamo and the practice of rendition, both of which exist solely to allow the violation of human rights while giving us deniability or at the least making jurisdictional issues complicate any attempts to bring suit.
That helps no one except the insurance industry. So there’s that.
Which Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming into tepidly supporting. Why do you give him any credit for that?
Absolutely. As a republican he has in fact accomplished a long list of their goals from the 90s. As a democrat? He’s been an unbelievable failure. No ESCA, no environmental protection, no protection for the social safety nets, no attempt to deal with the real problems in health care, no protection of unions, no amnesty for immigrants, no efforts at pulling us pack from the civil rights black hole we’ve been circling (quite the opposite in fact), no effort to deal with the wallstreeters who caused the financial meltdown (quite the opposite in fact), no effort to protect science from the right’s smear campaign, no effort to shut down either of our ridiculous wars on improper nouns (drugs/terrorism), no real effort to stop Israeli human rights abuses conducted with weapons we gave them…
no effort on pretty much anything that actually matters to the left.
Indeed it is futile to argue with insanity since we aren’t better on any of those measures. We are inarguably worse of in civil rights (All the same crap bush did plus the new super power to order assassinations of american citizens, yay!). The economy is inarguably worse than it was in October 2007 (which was before the big melt down). National security? We still still have forces tied up in two places in the middle east while not making any headway on North Korea or the problem of Pakistan, our military has recently demonstrated that our drones (which are becoming enormously widely used) are subject to common household worms/viruses. We still maintain inane TSA regulations that do not provide any protection at all and yet make us miserable. We are in short playing straight into the terrorist playbook of how you defeat a militarily superior opponent (get them to over reach and over react and watch them rip themselves apart). And AQ did this for the cost of a few one way tickets and some box cutters.
Norm,
Tlaloc hits a lot of the high notes, but I’d like to add, of these accomplishments you’ve mentioned, even BO isn’t running on most of them:
Obamacare? Crickets.
Auto bailouts? Soundbites in the labor-union heavy Midwest only.
Law enforcement for AQ? I assume you’re joking.
Biggest tax cut in history? Even the WAPO has debunked that nonsense.
Exit question: BO himself said within the last 2 weeks (October 3) that we’re not better off than 4 years ago. How can you possibly make that claim? A: Ideological blinkers?
Tlaloc…
Unfortunately I do not have time to debunk your argument…though i am confident I could make a dent.
I would just say that…big picture…if you expected Obama to be a liberal wunderkind then you were not paying attention to Obama. The guy has always been a centrist, a facilitator, a moderate, and a moderator. Indeed…his centrism is the reason the so-called right has veered so friggin’ far to the extreme in response to his Presidency.
In 2008 I voted for the guy that would get things done. He has done that. Do I wish he would accomplish more, or do some things differently? Absolutely. But I’m an adult and I understand that you never get everything you want. Perfection is the enemy of good. As I said…I give him a B under tremendous duress…and I see no one on the other side capable of that.
@Tlaloc:
I for one, will agree with most of your criticisms of where Obama has been little different from Bush. To me, if you placed Obama in time a decade or 2 ago, he’d seem most like a moderate-leaning Republican.
But this is now, and when it comes to what he has or hasn’t done, a couple questions that must be answered regarding supporting him vs. supporting a Republican candidate are:
1) In areas where I think Obama has gone the wrong direction, would the other candidate have done better or at least less bad.
2) In areas where I think Obama has pushed things in the right direction (however small), would the other candidate have done better?
And this is why Obama still has so much support on the left. For question 1, Obama has generally been like the standard Republican position, so replacing him doesn’t make those better. For 2, most of the Republican candidates are so far right they make Obama seem much better in comparison. Small gains (e.g. gay rights) are better than the reversals many GOP candidates are in favor of.
Obama support isn’t about idealism, it’s about realism. Even when you disagree with many of his choices, what GOP candidate wouldn’t do those same things plus more?
HJB…
You think maybe he was pro-actively disarming a political argument?
Look at the statistics…yes there are still major problems…but the idea that we were better off shedding 600,000 jobs a month and with the Dow at 8000 is just stupid.
There may be a school of thought that keeping interest rates artificially low, fostering another asset class bubble, not taking much-needed fiscal medicine, layering on gobs and gobs of debt for 9.1% unemployment, and measuring how well we’re collectively doing via how the Dow ticks is just stupid too. Exercise for the reader. Not a chance you’ll accept my premise, and vice versa. Thanks for the replies too.
HJB…
I do accept your premise.
But again…perfect is the enemy of good.
Name me anyone who has steered a country with a similar political make-up out of a similar economic crisis any better.
This is what Obama has always been good at- raising money and running for office. He has, and continues to be, unqualified for the office of the President of the United States.
@ A Conservative Teacher…
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/poll-obama-a-better-president-than-bush/
You guys realize that this total is 20% less than what was raised in the previous quarter? And you guys realize that George W. Bush raised more for his campaign at this time in 2003 than Obama has in 2011?
@ Thomas…yes, but in 2003 only a few of us realized how badly Bush was f’ing up the economy.
As the article quoted says:
A) I never expected Obama to be a progressive because i paid attention in the primary and didn’t like what I saw. On the other hand Obama did try a lot to do the wolf in sheeps clothing. If you look at the list of promises he’s broken you;ll have ample reading material to carry you through to november.
B) Obama has not always been anything for the very simple reason that he essentially burst onto the national stage after complete obscurity in 2004. And yes that was one of the warning signs back in the primary. people don;t have meteoric rises in one of the most corrupt areas of the country without being themselves corrupt.
C) if Obama’s moderatism has caused the republican extremism doesn’t that automatically negate the very reason to be moderate? Doesn’t it effectively show Obama’s entire political playbook is idiocy? Hint- yes.
I can’t complain that he doesn’t get things done, my complaint is that he always chooses to do the wrong things. To do the things his party never wanted. That’s where I kind of have to fault him. You should too.
If you;re fine with actively supporting evil lite, then that’s between you and your conscience. I don’t feel any compulsion to vote much less contribute or volunteer for the candidate who is slightly less evil than the other guy.
Besides which even arguing he’s the lesser evil is tenuous. Again he’s pushed the civil rights violations far past what Bush did, and more importantly by having the defacto head of the Dems be complicit in all the Rep crimes we now have a government that is 100% pro-torture. There’s no opposition precisely because these things are now done by Obama and the O-bots reflexively defend them.
A GOP candidate would have to deal with an opposition party on the left. That’s rather better than currently having a president who is center right and an opposition party that is hard hard right. Notice how far we’ve shifted to the right in these 4 years? Far more than in the 8 of Bush. We’re now regularly arguing how much the social safety nets should be gutted instead of SS being the third rail. That’s purely Obama’s fault. The overton window shifted hugely due to him being the head of the left when he’s not remotely lefty.
@Tlaloc: Are you actually proposing that the conversation would not have shifted as far to the right if McCain had been elected? I can get on board with the idea that Obama has been much more moderate than we might have liked him to be, but trading Obama for any GOP candidate would quickly move the overton window even more to the right.
yes, very much so.
No, just the opposite. We have a two party system. Think of it like a football game. Normally both sides start at the midpoint of the field and try to move the ball the way they want. Obama essentially agreed to start way towards our own goal line, meaning the right had much less effort to expend in order to score policy goals. Guess where play would have started had McCain be president? Midpoint or maybe better. McCain afterall had no problem sticking his thumb in the eye of the hard right. He seemed to hold them in great disdain and probably deeply resented the stupid things he had to do to win the nomination (falwell university, palin, etc.).
What Obama’s electon meant is that we had a center right party and a hard right party. McCain’s election would have left us with a leftish party and a center right party. That’d have been way better for us. Of course better still would have been an actual progressive president, but that just wasn’t in the cards.
Short version- if a president is going to do stupid hurtful things, at least make sure it’s the other party’s president.
Not to mention McCain would have left the right dispirited much as Obama has done to the left. Obama has caused an amazing turn around in the right’s political fortunes. He’s never been willing to really argue for their responsibility for the economic mess, at the same time he’s been willing to let them sabotage every effort at recovery. Consequently despite the clear culpability of the right’s economic fecklessness people once again trust them more on matters of economics.
@Tlaloc:
Nonsense, we would have a center right party, a hard right party and a MUCH more conservative president. We’ve already tried Democratic majorities with a GOP president, and no basically no progress was made on any important issue. Ergo, we already know what the results would be.
1. No difference or progress on Guantanamo as Obama is to the left of Congress on this issue.
2. Much less progress on HCR as McCain would veto anything even half as good as PPACA.
3. DADT repeal likely not passed, vetoed if passed.
4. Smaller stimulus, worse economic recovery
5. Quicker turn to talking about destroying the safety net, as the PPACA actually lowers the long term deficit, so it would look worse under a McCain presidency.
6. Increased troop involvement in the middle east
I’d go on, but on every issue I can think of, we’d be worse off under President McCain. The congressional Dems are pretty useless, so I can’t see why you’d think they’d miraculously save the day.
Compared to the last 4 years the period of 2006-2008 was a golden period. Dems in cntrol of congress with a conservative president is vastly better than Dems with an evaporating control of congress and a terrible dem president who gives the right everything they want (and for which they inexplicably hate him).
Short form- maybe no progress was made but the last 4 years have seen enormous progress lost.
Obama could close Gitmo with a word. he has that power as commander and chief to bring every detainee to a domestic military prison. But he hasn’t. He obviously has no interest in closing gitmo.
PPACA was the worst piece of legislation in my lifetime. Vetoing that abomination would have been a blessing. It did nothing to help people and an enormous amount to enrich the insurance companies and make them the official government solution to health insurance which means we will NEVER now get rid of them. They haev all the power and legitimacy they need to forever more control the entire show. We’ve been absolutely screwed by that piece of %$#@.
Again Obama could have effectively ended DADT with a word. No congressional action needed. Again- he didn’t.
And look what we got instead- a failed stimulus too small to be of use but a great demagogue issue for the right to gut keynesian economics which means the next time we have a recession the default position is going to be austerity. I’d much rather have had a failed stimulus that might lead to better economic policy (McCain) than a failed stimulus that leads to worse economic policy in the future (Obama). Why wouldn’t you?
No, not even remotely. McCain would have faced a united dem opposition against it. Obama split the dems by virtue of being the dem president. That’s the only thing that made the current situation possible.
*shrug*
if either president is hell bent on breaking the military (and destroying any remaining good will we might have) then I don’t see much benefit in choosing one over the other.
It’s like saying “sure obama shoots you in the face with a .44 but McCain would have shot you in the face with a shotgun! Who cares? I’ll pick neither and be pretty happy with that choice, thank you.
And you’d be wrong on all of those too. Far from being useless the house dems have been the only thing anchoring us from the complete suck Obama seems bond and determined to deliver.
@Tlaloc:
…yeah, good luck with that.
It’s hardly surprising that this news would flush out a whole nest of commenters who vividly illustrate what sour grapes they are chewing on…
Indeed, as someone with a pre-existing condition, I do in fact need good luck to get by now. The conventional meds run about 30-40 grand a year. I’ve been in a clinical trial to test a new med which is the only reason I’ve had any meds at all. I’ve got a couple years left in that and by then I better have emigrated to a country that doesn’t regard the sick as an exciting profit opportunity. I’m strongly looking at Canada because I don’t really want to have to move that far away from my family and the pacific northwest.
@Tlaloc: Or you could lose your PPACA phobia long enough to realize it is part of the solution and is allowing Vermont and Montana to set up single payer health care.
Nothing about the PPACA actually helps a state set up a single payer solution, and a state single payer solution is pretty much guaranteed to fail. It has to be national to work because the federal government can run a deficit while states are shackled by having to run a balanced budget.
What’s more contra your argument the move for states to make single payer systems is precisely because the PPACA is a piece of crap. They’re trying to get exemptions from the exchange by setting up their own infinitely better system. By the way that provision is not one Obama wanted but one that Wyden had to fight to get into the bill (Wyden’s one of my senators and I thank him for that very sincerely).
@Tlaloc: Look, at least try to be more factually correct than the average conservative commenter. If the waivers are part of the PPACA, then they are part of the PPACA, no matter who did or didn’t approve of them at one time. Both states are using PPACA funds for their singly payer solutions, so it’s absolutely the case the PPACA is helping the states set up single payer solutions.
That the PPACA allows states to set up something they think will be a better solution and cover more people is part of the PPACA, even if you think it’s one of the few good parts of the law. Pretending it’s all bad and actively ignoring parts you don’t is a pretty good way to have zero credibility.
Hold on, this may shock you-I don’t actually worry about having credibility with O-bots since the term to you guys means unswerving devotion to Obama irregardless of what he does. I’d rather simply deal with facts, you might try it sometime.
No, if it makes you feel better, not literally every part of the ACA is a bad thing. it’s just that on the whole the thing is such a titanic @$$ raping of regular citizens that the few little lights of not suck kind of get lost, know what I mean?
And if the best thing you can point to in the entire mess is that it sometimes allows people to escape from it, then why bother passing it at all?