In 2008, the Obama campaign raised and spent more money than has ever been spent in a presidential election, coming up with the “parallel public financing” crock* to cover for reneging on an agreement with John McCain to take real public financing once they realized just how much money they could raise, both at home and abroad.

The 2012 edition of Obama for America was supposed to be a billion dollar machine that would steamroll any Republican opponent without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately for the incumbent, a funny thing happened on the way to that fundraising total: despite holding over 160 fundraisers – more than the previous five presidents combined –, the money just hasn’t been there for the Democrat’s campaign (perhaps because so few people have money for their own expenses these days?).

The campaign’s desperation is palpable, as can be seen in the latest email (sent Friday, July 6), which invokes every bogeyman the Obama team can think of in an effort to shake some spare change out of their email recipients’ sofa cushions:

Jeff —

Romney and the Republicans announced yesterday that they brought in more than $100 million in June.

For context, that’s about what we raised in April and May combined.

We’re still tallying our own numbers, but his means their gap is getting wider, and if it continues at this pace, it could cost us the election.

If everyone who’s been waiting to give pitches in $3 or more today, we can start reversing this trend in just a few hours.

Please do your part — make a donation of $3 or more right now.

One hundred million is alarming enough, but it doesn’t even include the millions pouring into pro-Romney super PACs — or the fact that, unlike four years ago, it’s perfectly legal for the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove, and anonymous billionaires to funnel unlimited money into attacking President Obama in critical battleground states.

I’m proud of the way we build this organization. Through the primaries, more than three-quarters of our donations were from people giving less than $1,000. Meanwhile, in that same period, Mitt Romney’s campaign raised three-quarters of its money from people giving $1,000 or more.

If we don’t take this seriously now, we risk finding ourselves at a point where there is too much ground to make up.

We need to do something about it. Today.

Please donate $3 or more:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Close-the-Gap

More to come.

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Consider this line again: “If we don’t take this seriously now, we risk finding ourselves at a point where there is too much ground to make up.” If that’s not pure, sweet desperation from the “billion dollar campaign” and the architects of the “parallel public financing” system, then I’m not sure what to call it.

Keep giving, folks. The other side, which has wielded campaign dollars and governmental power like sledgehammers for four years now, is incredibly scared. The Democrats can invoke as many bogeymen as they’d like; the $4 million in small donations from 47,000 individual donors that the Romney campaign received in the 24 hour period immediately following the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision make up just one example of the truth behind the Republican candidate’s funding. That fact scares the Axelrod–Messina–Obama campaign machine as much as anything they’ve seen from the GOP this election season.

* Lest we forget, this was a campaign that was narcissistic enough to invent the “office of the president-elect” in an effort to sound official during the awkward three months between the 2008 election and Obama’s 2009 swearing-in (during which period Obama was still a junior senator from Illinois, and George Bush still president).