Pres. Obama has a Guinness with the wrong kind of people—the ones who aren't friends with Mitt Romney. (Jonathan Ersnt/Reuters)
Not only did President Barack Obama
raise a ton of money, he also did it from small dollar donors that he can hit up again and again.
In February, 348,000 people donated to raise over $45 million for this campaign. Thank you.
105,000 of the people who donated in February were giving to support this organization for the very first time.
Every five bucks helped. 97.7% of February's contributions were $250 or less, for an average donation of $59.04.
Since April 2011, a total of 1.64 million people have pitched in to own a piece of this campaign.
Mitt Romney raised just $11.5 million, all of which he is spending on winning a nomination he's going to eventually win. And the vast majority of Romney's money came from rich donors who are maxed out and can no longer donate to him.
So all's good, right? Well, not if you're a beltway hack publication.
Obama lags behind Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in finding donors willing to give $2,000 or more — a surprising development for a sitting president, and one that could signal more worrisome financial problems heading into the general election. At this point in the last election cycle, Obama had received such large donations from more than 23,000 supporters, more than double the 11,000 who have given him that much this time. President George W. Bush had more than four times that number of big donations at this point in his reelection.
What is more worrisome—raising $11.5 million from people who can no longer give to you, or raising $45 million from people giving you $50, and able to give several times that amount over the next 7-8 months? The perfect campaign would be the one funded by zero maxed-out donors, the one in which wealth and privilege have zero influence.
Sure, Republicans will lean heavily on Super PAC millions, but people already know what they think of Obama. They don't need an ad to tell them whether to like the president or not. They either do or don't.
It's different in House and Senate races, where the politicians are less defined. Heck, it'll be different for the far lesser-known Romney, who will be hit with a barrage of negative defining Democratic ads as soon as he clinches the nomination. But targeting Obama will be wasted money.
But Super Pacs or not, campaigns still need cash to run to identify voters, engage them, activate them, get them to volunteer and get them to turn out. As visible as campaign ads are, they are just part of a well-oiled and effective campaign. The Obama campaign has an army of vested small donors to fuel it, while Romney chases after a smaller pool of the same rich fucks who tanked our economy and nearly brought the nation (and the world) to its knees.
People-powered politics will always trump plutocrat-powered politics, no matter how much that offends the Beltway and Wall Street elite.