Thursday, June 21, 2012

Obama - It's NOT going to be 2008 all over again...

It's not 2008 again and Obama starting to realize that....and with all the issues in his party, his failures in the first term and his constant lying to the American People it is not going to be pretty for him...

As Obama Burns Through Cash, New Questions Arise About His Strategy


By Chris Stirewalt Power Play Published June 21, 2012 FoxNews.com

“I will not be heading to Charlotte for the national convention because I believe it is much more important to spend my time in Western Pennsylvania listening to the people about how we can create jobs for the region."

--- Rep. Mark Critz, D-Pa., in a statement explaining why he was joining a growing number of moderate Democratic incumbents in skipping their party’s September convention.

In May, President Obama had to dip into his campaign cash reserves for the first time in order to finance his massive and very expensive re-election effort.

That significant figures in the Democratic Party can blow off the president and what was supposed to be his second ascension to Olympus with such impunity is a sign of things to come. And the fact that the president is now in a financial pickle will only embolden the moderates in his party to cast off the uncomfortable yoke of supporting Obama.

Despite an unprecedented number of fundraisers by the president and a campaign organization constantly working to grind out $3 or $5 contributions from supporters online, Obama started May with $115 million in the bank, but ended with $110 million. He took in $39 million, but spent $44.6 million.

That’s still a tremendous amount of money, but Obama now faces the reality that Republican Mitt Romney is catching up fast. Romney and the Republican National Committee brought in almost $77 million in May, far outstripping the $60 million combined for Obama and his party. The RNC now boasts $61 million in cash reserves. That’s not $110 million, but it’s getting closer.

Add in the fact that conservatives have been far more successful with creating and funding outside political groups than liberals, and one senses that the president could be swamped in spending by the end of the summer.

Obama’s relentless fundraising effort was intended to put the president in a position where he held a prohibitive cash advantage. But his numbers have not matched all the effort he and his party have poured into fundraising. For the president to already be dipping into savings is a sign of trouble for that strategy. The time to start tapping the war chest is Labor Day, not Memorial Day.

Democrats are trying to make a virtue of their disadvantage, trying to illicit more donations with calls for alarm and trying to make Obama a more sympathetic figure by saying that he is a victim of corporate villainy. Well, you have to say something, Power Play supposes.

This money miscalculation (remember the talk of the $1 billion campaign?) has cast longer shadows over Obama’s unconventional re-election strategy.

The Obama plan was about using very expensive techniques – lots of employees, lots of costly technology – to reanimate the dormant Obama coalition of 2008. Obama has spent months stroking different parts of his base: unions, Hispanics, single moms, same-sex marriage enthusiasts, black voters, college students, etc.

The big idea was that while Obama was going to have a tougher go than in 2008, the same coalition could lift him to a second term. Obama knew Republicans would be more unified than in 2008, but he figured he could triumph in a scorched-earth, base-versus-base election. The power of incumbency, especially as it relates to fundraising, counts for a lot, just not as much as Obama thought.

What Obama didn’t do was move to heal the deepest rifts in his party and broaden his appeal to more moderate voters. Having resisted the typical move to the middle in the second-half of his term, Obama was counting on his own ability to remake a coalition, not the resurrection of Democratic unity that flowered in the fall of 2008.

But if Obama can’t afford the kind of juggernaut he once expected he could and if the Red Team is going to out spend the Blue Team, there are new doubts about the whole idea of Obama muscling through a win on a strategy that looks a lot like a coast-to-coast effort in community organizing.

More and more Clinton Democrats are looking to distance themselves from Obama, like the moderate House members who have followed suit of the top West Virginia Democrats and said they will skip their party’s convention.

That significant figures in the Democratic Party can blow off the president and what was supposed to be his second ascension to Olympus with such impunity is a sign of things to come. And the fact that the president is now in a financial pickle will only embolden the moderates in his party to cast off the uncomfortable yoke of supporting Obama.




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