Despite consistently leading Romney in national polls, the president's re-election campaign has not been shy about pointing out that it is getting beat in fundraising. Instead, it has used that fact as a message to donors as to why they should "step it up"—and now.
In an email to supporters Monday night after the July fundraising totals were released, the campaign wrote:
If you're one of the 761,546 people who donated in July, thanks. And High Five! But we got beat three months in a row. If we don't step it up, we're in trouble, because we're up against billionaires and super PACs that are funneling unprecedented amounts of money to defeat President Obama in this election.
The email included an infographic showing that 188,679 donors with an average contribution of $53 equals just one Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul who is the largest donor to the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.
"There's a lot of resistance among Democratic fat cats to give big money," Al Hunt, executive editor of Bloomberg News in Washington, noted on Morning Joe Tuesday. "They don’t like super PACs; he hasn’t courted them the way [former President Bill] Clinton did; and some of them don’t believe the sky is falling…He finds it hard to court anyone. He doesn’t court members of Congress, fellow politicians. It’s just not his style."
Others on the show, including host Joe Scarborough, deposited that Democrats aren't donating as much because they can't fathom President Obama losing the election in the fall. "Democrats just don’t believe that Barack Obama can lose to a guy like Mitt Romney, just like we Republicans in 1992 did not believe that George H.W. Bush would ever lose to a guy like Bill Clinton."
There's no doubt that getting past and new donors to open their wallets wider will take on an even stronger urgency as summer fades away.
"What the White House is going to have to do in September-October is if the polls start showing in some of the swing states that it’s going the other way and Romney is starting to edge up, they’re going to have to after those donors much harder," Katty Kay of BBC World News said during Morning Joe. "Now, maybe four years of not courting donors isn’t going to open purse strings with a few poll numbers, but they’re going to have to bank on it."