Obama’s grassroots support strong v Q2 2007
Inside the Washington beltway, Republican politicians and pundits think the national debt ceiling, budget, and spending v taxes will be the issues that harm the President’s chances for re-election in 2012.
They couldn’t be more out of touch with most of the American people if they moved to the moon. The real crisis issues facing this country are jobs and the economy. People will vote for whoever they see working on creating good jobs and improving the economy.
Speaker Boehner has been in charge of the House for 192 days as of this writing, and he and the GOP caucus still don’t have a jobs bill.
While all the debt ceiling shenanigans have been going on, President Obama’s re-election campaign has been very busy working hard at the grassroots level to raise a huge swell of support and votes come 2012.
Here’s the Obama second quarter campaign report:
Washington pundits are dogging the President’s fundraising total of $86 million in this quarter. They claim he must raise $100 million every quarter until the election.
I disagree that total dollars are the real issue. The real issue is people joining and working with the organization and getting out the vote. Those small donations from a lot of people translate into real votes. The number of people matters far more than total dollars.
Why? Dollars don’t vote, people vote.
The GOP will take money from lobbyists, corporations, and big-spending special interest groups, and they won’t have to report everything they make because of the Citizens United decision. They will collect a ton of money. But it will cost them many more dollars per vote than it will cost the Democrats.
We saw in the 2010 election that some very wealthy candidates (Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman come immediately to mind) didn’t win despite smothering their campaigns with their own money. The Democrats who won those two elections didn’t have near the funding. They won because of a large grassroots organization working on the ground for them.
Some seats can be bought. But for the most part, the American people can see when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and practically spamming all media with messages that don’t resonate with middle and working class voters, regardless of party affiliation.
The Republican party has become a party controlled by Tea Party groups, corporations and the obscenely rich (hello Koch brothers!) who couldn’t care less about the average American family. Most Republican Representatives and Senators are quite wealthy themselves. Tea Partiers who vote on their ideology plain don’t understand economics. They vote against their own well-being.
I’d bet most (not all) House and Senate Republicans haven’t eaten at a fast food restaurant or visited a grocery store in many years. Nor do they have any idea what a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and a tank of gas cost. Sure, there are some Democrats who are very wealthy and just as out of touch with average Americans. But they are far fewer than their GOP colleagues.
Self-serving politicians will either bring themselves down or they will bring the country down. I have great hope they have done a wonderful job of bringing themselves down since the 2010 election.
Keep in mind when you hear the spin about fundraising that dollars don’t vote, people vote. The Obama campaign is counting people.
\\ tags: 2012 election, Fundraising, Obama 2008, Obama 2012
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