No we can’t! No we can’t!
President Obama is no fundraising slouch, but people who donated $200 or more in 2008 just aren’t that into his reelection campaign.
88% of Obama’s 2008 over-$200 donors are AWOL in 2012. http://t.co/BVsULGK3 #TCOT #RS
— RedState (@RedState) June 4, 2012
Via RedState:
This is one of the more amusing factoids that you’re going to read this morning: “According to a BuzzFeed analysis of campaign finance data, 88% of the people who gave $200 or more in 2008 — 537,806 people — have not yet given that sum this year. And this drop-off isn’t simply an artifact of timing. A full 87% of the people who gave $200 — the sum that triggers an itemized report to the Federal Elections Commission — through April of 2008, 182,078 people, had not contributed by the end of last month.
Door-to-door thingamajig salesmen probably have more repeat buyers than this.
If Obama wanted contributors to re-up, he should have focused less on shovel-ready b.s., more on shovel-ready jobs. And not the “saved or created” kind.
Sure, as RedState’s Moe Lane points out, 2008 contributors are likely to vote for Obama even if he’s not inspiring them to open their wallets. But that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the desperate spin:
Is Obama's donor base abandoning him – or are they just waiting? http://t.co/zoqdY5NZ
— Jan Arild Snoen (@jasnoen) June 4, 2012
Maybe too early to count donors out, but still a good read MT @ZekeJMiller: Obama's 2008 Donors Don't Give In 2012 http://t.co/WKxng2Dn
— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) June 4, 2012
um, ok. @buzzfeed compares Obama's early 2008 fundraising, when he was in PRIMARY BATTLE, w/ his early `12 fundraising; http://t.co/2XEdlLej
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) June 4, 2012
Or maybe, just maybe, Obama’s donors aren’t feeling the hope because they’re all out of change.
Unemployment stood at 4.9% when Iowa Democrats chose him on January 3, 2008. It ticked back up to 8.1% this April.
“Financially, I had more money back then than I do today,” said Greg Holmes, who works in the technology sector in Cedar Park, Texas, and gave $550 last cycle. “I’ll vote for him, but I probably won’t give any money.”
“I don’t have as much money,” said Ann Walling, a retired Episcopal priest from Franklin, Tenn. who donated $1,900 to Obama in ‘08. Money aside though, Walling is still pledging her vote to Obama. “For the most part I’m very happy with him,” she said.
“I’ve had to kind of back off my charity giving,” said Leah Jones, a retired clinical microbiologist from Langdon, Kan., who gave $1,200 last cycle but said she’s been driven to the financial brink by a son’s illness, and hasn’t even paid her income taxes yet.
Job-killing, business-smothering, savings-draining policies aren’t looking so hot now, huh?
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