I had not realized that things were this bad for the Obama administration:

Democratic congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have privately sought as much as $30 million combined from Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee — a replay of the financial help they received from Obama in 2008 and 2010.

But that’s not going to happen, top Obama aides Jim Messina and David Plouffe told Reid and Pelosi in back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday, according to sources familiar with the high-level talks.

I mean, I knew that things were bad, and for the same reason that Ed Morrissey knew: both of us can read campaign finance reports, and both of us remember how the 2008 Obama campaign trumpeted its monthly fundraising. Mind you, it’s reasonable to expect that Obama is probably going to have a hefty enough war chest, but 2008 was a fluke. Or possibly a mass hallucination comparable to the ergot-fueled European witch panics; the historians will make the final decision on that in about sixty years or so, after we’re all safely dead.

But this is something new – and it should be troubling for any Democrat who is both in trouble (or just in a competitive race), and not from a state that will be part of Obama’s final battle plan. To put it very starkly: Democrats in trouble in, say, Kentucky and/or Arkansas, can’t expect the President to waste time keeping them afloat. Likewise: Democrats in trouble in, say, Illinois or Rhode Island, can’t expect the President to waste time keeping them afloat, either. Comes right down to it, even the Democrats in critical swing states will probably need to be accustomed to in-kind support from the President instead of financial assistance. And as for candidates… well. Isn’t that what the DCCC and DSCC is for?

It would be cruel of me to note that the Politico notes that the DCCC and DSCC have been told that they will have only limited access to the President for fundraisers, so let me explicitly note that… and also that I’m not surprised in the slightest by any of this. I was saying back in January of 2011 that it was going to be Obama first, and the Devil take the hindmost…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*This DOOM subject to change without warning.