Down in the Polls, Obama Makes Dash for Cash

-- Rose Ann DeMoro, who heads the 65,000-member California Nurses Association and National Nurses United, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle mocking President Obama’s solicitations of California’s well-heeled donors.

President Obama is looking to rake in more than $4 million from wealthy donors in a West Coast campaign swing as the embattled incumbent looks to deepen his cash reserves.

Obama’s campaign team is counting on massive early fundraising to re-establish the president as a strong bet for re-election despite a spate of struggles.

Bruising battles with Republicans over federal spending, unpopular foreign policy positions in Libya and Afghanistan and continued economic instability have left Obama in a weakened position with voters. His poll numbers have been rapidly retreating from a post-election revival. Obama’s job approval in the Real Clear Politics average is back down to its mid 40s range from the health care doldrums of 2010 and still sliding.

Today and tomorrow Obama will be the headliner at six fundraisers, including one for 60 donors who will pay $35,800 apiece for dinner, a Thursday breakfast with seats ranging from $5,000 to $35,000 and a star-studded event Thursday night at the Sony Theater where the president will tap the entertainment industry for similar sums.

This follows his fundraising kickoff in Chicago and will likely be followed by a trip to New York to go trawling for Wall Street big fish. It’s part of an effort to raise what Democrats believe will be an insurmountable sum. The goal is to beat the president’s 2008 haul of $750 million and do so without the need to spend money on a costly primary campaign.

That effort will be augmented by unrestricted spending by outside groups led by Obama loyalists like former spokesman Bill Burton and the president’s labor allies. The range of spending in support of Obama’s bid for a second term could be far in excess of the eye-popping $1 billion that first caught attention.

The message to Republicans (and any Democrats daydreaming of a primary challenge) is that they can’t afford the stakes at Obama’s table.

There are downsides to Obama’s gold rush, though. Canoodling with corporate donors and the heir and heiress set who populate Democratic fundraising circles reinforces Obama’s image as out of touch with regular Americans and diverts his attention from governing at a time when he is struggling to show he is in control.

Democrats hope that Obama can raise enough money early on to rev up the machinery necessary to put the squeeze on mid-level donors soon with an avalanche of postal, electronic and telephonic solicitations. That effort will be expensive, but less time consuming for the president.

By buttering up the rich folks this spring, Obama is trying to build a perpetual motion political machine.

 

 

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