As dusk settles on the campaign, the Obama team’s fundraising strategy comes into focus. On the one hand, they bullied conservative donors. The administration drafted an executive order, never signed, that would have required firms seeking government contracts to disclose their political giving. Campaign manager Jim Messina singled out the Koch-supported Americans for Prosperity for attack. Senior adviser David Axelrod went after Adelson. It just so happened that the IRS and the SEC, respectively, opened investigations into Romney supporters Frank Vandersloot and Adelson (the administration says this is all a coincidence). These efforts may not have stopped wealthy Republicans and conservatives from donating to Romney and outside groups, but who would argue that they have had no affect on the margins?
Meanwhile Obama pandered and shamed apathetic liberal donors into writing checks. Contributions were off at the beginning of the year. Greens were upset that Obama had not been radical enough on the environment. Gay donors were angry that the president had not done enough to support same-sex marriage. Many progressive millionaires and billionaires simply assumed Obama would win in November. So the Keystone pipeline was put on hold, the president reversed himself on same-sex marriage, and a steady barrage of alarming emails was aimed at Democratic in-boxes. Sympathetic articles in the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker alerted liberal audiences to the fact that the Obama Super PAC was having trouble raising money. Campaign surrogates fostered the misleading impression that Obama was somehow the underdog in the money race.
And it paid off.
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