Moe Lane

Buzzfeed, May 20th, 2012: “Big Money Dries Up For Obama Campaign”

Donations to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign declined sharply in April, as many big-dollar contributors hit the legal maximum, a BuzzFeed analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows.

[snip]

Most of Obama’s drop is attributable to a decline in contributions of more than $500, which fell by more than $9 million. Many of Obama’s top donors have already hit the legal $2500 maximum to the campaign, which — along with an apparent failure to recruit a new cadre of wealthy supporters — may account for the decline.

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…it’s just that it’s Monday and I am still prying my eyes open.
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…in this election season (H/T: Hot Air)  And I ask: when did Obama campaign well?

No, seriously.  Every successful campaign that Obama has participated in before 2008 was under the aegis of the Illinois Democratic political machine.  He merely had to show up, hit his marks, speak a few times, vote as he was told, and let the targeted leaking of damaging information about his opponents do the rest.  That doesn’t require political skill: that requires both the ability to conceal boredom, and excellent bladder control.  Then, during the 2008 primary, Obama handed off the details of the primaries to the geeks* and vaguely went off to let them work on building his profile for a VP bid.  The geeks then managed to hack the Democratic primary and munchkin the living hell out of it; they found every exploit that existed in the political source code, and used them all**.  Again, Obama didn’t have to do a darn thing except show up.  And as for the 2008 general election… well. McCain didn’t like to fight, the economy melted down, and Obama showed up.

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The Christian Science Monitor, blinking through the sudden pain:

The poll by Gallup Inc. and USA Today showed Obama with 47 percent support in the 12 states and Romney with 45 percent, well within the survey’s margin of error of 4 percentage points. That is a tighter race than in March, when it found the Democratic president with 51 percent and Romney with 42 percent.

…You don’t say?

Moe Lane

PS: Interesting contrast with this, in some ways.

Jim Geraghty makes the call for a light touch:

[A] lot of Obama voters must be persuaded that they made the wrong choice in 2008, and that it isn’t their fault.

I happen to agree with this, by the way.  Satisfying as it may be to have people* admit that they were wrong and stupid and should have listened to the rest of us, my goal has always been to win the election.  When you win the election, you get to have the fight over how best to run the country.  You lose the election, your opinion frankly doesn’t matter. (more…)

It’s just a general one, and I’m not going to hang any links or anything on it: it’s not that kind of post. I just want to make it clear that I think two things:

• First: that the Citizens United decision makes all of the rules of thumb about fundraising that we have developed over the last decade or so more or less obsolete.  Not to mention the ones about what constitutes a legitimate attack*.
• Second: the major candidates and political institutions have not yet really internalized this yet.

Moe Lane

*The days when that decision was up to a candidate are more or less over now.  Which is simultaneously a positive and negative development.

Dan Spencer over at RedState reminds us that three years ago today Obama gave himself three years to get this situation under control:

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Sean Trende, in the process of noting that, really, Obama’s numbers are grotesquely bad right now, mentioned independent voters:

Given the enthusiasm gap between the parties, the 2012 electorate will probably be roughly split between Republicans and Democrats. Independent voters will therefore hold the key to the election.

Consider these three 2010 Senate challengers frequently cited as examples of candidates who are too extreme to win. It’s a little-known fact that Ken Buck won independents by 16 points in Colorado. In Nevada, Sharron Angle won them by four points. Even Christine O’Donnell, who is something of the ultimate warning sign against Tea Party excess, lost independents only by three points. They all lost their races in large part because they faced Democrat-heavy electorates. Had the electorates been evenly split between the parties, all three would have run very close races.

Whatever their faults, Romney, Gingrich, and Perry are not Christine O’Donnell-style candidates.

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This is a one-night one from the Perry campaign, specific to Iowa.

Meanwhile, the knives are out between Romney & Gingrich.  Should be interesting to watch; God knows that both campaigns are not exactly lacking in material to work with.

…I’m starting to get the first calls from campaigns looking for RedState phone interviews. We had a pretty good run, last cycle: I think that the tally is something like at least five sitting governors, six sitting Senators, and twenty-six sitting Congressmen were interviewed by RedState since 2009.  Given that I’ll probably doing a lot of the non-Presidential ones, I figure that putting up the ground rules here and RedHotting it will give the right balance of access and shameless self-promotion.

Basically, the rules are these: I’ll be happy to interview people running as Republicans (I’m not interested in third-party candidates, sorry); I will interview people running against a Republican incumbent; but I am not interested in Red-on-Red Congressional dirt-spreading (I’m having enough headaches from the Republican Presidential primaries already).  Simply put, if you want your candidate to have a shot at telling me and RedState’s readers how awesome s/he is, great; if you want to instead take ten minutes telling me about how awful your Republican* opponent is… yeah, this is probably not going to go well.

Contact form is here; alternatively, anybody reading this with access to a RedState Director can use that email.  It’ll get to me pretty quickly.

Moe Lane

*Candidates can always tell me about how awful their Democratic opponent is, though.  That’s perfectly spiffy.

Before you watch this clip (via Jim Geraghty), I want you to understand something: this is Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States of America. This is the guy hand-picked by then-Senator Barack Obama to be his wingman. This is the guy that was to have Obama’s back; the person that Obama would trust with the keys; the man who the President could rely on, no matter what. And not just from the point of view of the Presidency: with this pick Barack Obama made it clear that, in his judgment, Joe Biden was the best, most reliable choice out there for the Democratic party.

Got that?

Good. Now watch: (more…)

There’s a rumor going around that she’s being tapped to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket (no link, sorry: I’m getting this one via email).  Supposedly it’s at the point where certain NY Republicans are quietly exploring the possibility of doing a run for the seat, after all; I’ve heard that at least one downstate Republican elected official is seriously considering going for it.

I’m not all that convinced that this rumor is credible, but I have to admit that my reasons for discounting it are as follows:

• It’s a bad idea for New York Democrats (win or lose, they’ll be removing a potential candidate for Governor down the line);
• It’s a bad idea for national Democrats (they can ill-afford to put yet another Senate seat in play for 2012);
• It’s an embarrassment for everybody who dutifully insisted that Biden would be a net positive for the Obama administration.

Which is to say, none of the reasons would have any effect on Barack Obama – even the last one; he can always claim that choosing Biden wasn’t really entirely voluntary on his part* – and God knows that the man is narcissistic enough to think that he could get away with it.

So, there’s that.

Moe Lane

*It’d be easy, really.  Party leadership wanting to add the voice of experience to the ticket, blah blah, no wish to hurt the party further after the primary, yadda yadda, Obama now realizes that he should have trusted his own judgement more, etc, etc, etc…