Mike Curtiss (13
July 2012)
"Zero Campaign in
Worse Shape Than It Appears"
Dear Doves,
Reading it's own internal polling
numbers, the Hussein camp must be suffering insomnia. Now,
we learn they are losing the money race as well. The only aspect
of the Presidential race they have
concentrated upon has been fund raising. Now, they are losing it
as well to Romney.
Agape,
Mike C.
Obama Campaign Is in Worse Shape Than It Looks
By Adam Yoshida
One strains, studying the entire history of presidential
elections, to think of a president who was re-elected under such
economic conditions as prevail in the U.S. today. Now,
with June's campaign finance data trickling out, we can add the
grotesque financial mismanagement of the Obama campaign as
another factor counting against the president in addition to
those historic headwinds.
Last time around, Mr. Obama argued that his successful
management of his campaign was proof that he was up to the
administrative challenges of the presidency. Now, with
months of evidence to back us, his opponents can convincingly
argue that, in fact, his campaign shares the defects of his
administration: out-of-control spending over the long term
followed not by spending reductions, but instead by a frantic
search for more money, wherever it might be found.
We don't know the final numbers for June yet. But here is
what we do know. The Romney campaign and the RNC, smashing
records, finished the month with around $160 million in cash on
hand after raising $106 million over the last month. The
Obama campaign raised $71 million in June after finishing May
with $109 million in cash on hand. Figuring out the Obama
campaign's present cash level is a matter of simple algebra --
$109 million plus $71 million minus X, X being the amount spent
in June.
How much did Team Obama spend in June? Given that they
haven't leaked the figure yet, it stands to reason that whatever
the number is, it must be high enough to leave them trailing
Team Romney. Based on ad spending and what we know about
the Obama campaign's fixed costs, I think that we can make an
educated guess. During some weeks in June, the Obama
campaign spent as much as $16 million in television
advertising. All told, from what figures are publicly
available, it seems reasonable to estimate that Obama's June ad
spending totaled in the range of $50 million.
However, the Obama campaign's fixed expenses are also extremely
high. With 700 employees, the campaign is spending at this
point around $3 million a month in staff alone. In fact,
at earlier points during this campaign, nearly half of Obama's
spending was directed towards administrative expenses -- a
reflection of a campaign infrastructure that was shaped during a
period when they were anticipating raising more than $1 billion
for the race. In other words, $60 million is probably a
lowball estimate for Obama's June spending, leaving his campaign
at a significant cash disadvantage versus the Romney campaign
heading into July.
By way of comparison, at the end of June 2004, the Bush-Cheney
campaign had $63 million in cash on hand to the Kerry campaign's
$28 million. For the incumbent to be trailing the
challenger by somewhere north of $40 million in cash at this
stage of the campaign is a very worrisome thing.
This is especially true when one considers some of the other tea
leaves. The inability of the Democratic convention to
raise money and the resultant need to reduce the scale of the
festivities is a prime example of what one would expect to see
from a campaign in serious trouble.
It has often been remarked upon that Obama has already attended
far more fundraisers than any of his predecessors. You can
raise only so much money from holding dinners with George
Clooney before all of your Hollywood-New York-San Francisco
donors are maxed out. If the Obama campaign has another
month like June or one that's just slightly worse, the situation
for the campaign moves from concerning to dire.
If Romney raises another $100 million -- which, given his
fundraising surge after the health care decision, he just might
-- and Obama raises in the same range, then the former will have
$260 million to spend over the month of July and the latter will
have around $190 million. Assuming equal ad spending and
accounting for the Obama campaign's much higher fixed expenses,
let's say that Romney spends $65 million in July and Obama
spends $70 million. At that point, you could have an Obama
campaign looking into August -- and an onrushing general
election campaign -- with an entirely insurmountable cash
disadvantage.
Now, you can make a convincing argument that a president of
sufficient rhetorical force might overcome challenging economic
times and win an election. Politicians have been outspent
before and won. But let's face it: a guy who is facing
terrible economic numbers and who is getting outspent by tens of
millions of dollars is going to lose even if he is the most
convincing orator since Cicero -- which, to be blunt, this guy
is not.
Consider the polls. Obama remains effectively tied with
Romney in every major poll out in recent days -- Gallup,
Rasmussen, ABC, CNN/Opinion Research, Washington Times -- in
spite of the fact that the Obama campaign has massively outspent
the Romney campaign so far, more or less flooding the airwaves
in battleground states with campaign ads. The Romney
campaign, while keeping its own powder dry, has been able to
maintain parity through the assistance of outside groups, such
as Crossroads GPS. I don't think that anyone expects,
going forward, Republican Super-PACs and other outside groups to
be outspent by Democratic ones, and as things stand today, it
looks like the Obama campaign is going to blow what once seemed
to be an unbeatable financial lead. Obama himself may well
become the first incumbent in the modern era to be outspent, and
by a large margin at that.
This does not mean, of course, that the election is over.
With his chances of winning on the merits or through logistics
blown, Obama has just one serious hope for re-election: he needs
to find a way to deliver a knock-out blow against Mitt Romney
that will lead a majority of Americans to conclude that he is
unacceptable as a prospective president. For that reason
alone, I am not particularly looking forward to the coming
months, as I expect that the Obama campaign's attacks, already
typically ugly and deceitful, will become increasingly hateful
and shrill and that they will continue up until the last
possible moment.
Nor should we rule out that, all other things having failed,
Obama might use "the Chicago way" to muscle on through.
After all, this is a man who -- together with his team -- won
most of his elections not at the polls, but rather by
disqualifying his opponents from the ballot and having divorce
records mysteriously unsealed. The carefully coordinated
attack against Governor Romney over his "Swiss bank accounts"
will, I am certain, soon give way to darker insinuations perhaps
both by the president and by his supporters. Perhaps, as
we saw in 2008 with donations made to the campaign from
unverified foreign credit cards, when they run out of legitimate
money, the campaign will find new sources. We ought not
forget the lessons of 2004, when Democratic operatives, with the
collusion of parts of the mainstream media, sought to use forged
documents to attack the character of President Bush in order to
sway the election. They were stopped then only because the
new media was ready, willing, and able to refute and respond to
their lies. A cornered opponent is more dangerous than any
other.