First there was Vice President Joe Biden in an email to supporters urging them to donate because of a fear that Team Obama would be upset. He even promised a lucky donor a cup of coffee and a flight out to Washington to enjoy the coffee with him. Now President Barack Obama has issued a wake up call to Democrats. Here’s the email in full:
Friend —
We’re getting outraised — a first for a sitting president, if this continues. Not just by the super PACs and outside groups that are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into misleading ads, but by our opponent and the Republican Party, which just outraised us for the second month in a row.
We can win a race in which the other side spends more than we do. But not this much more.
So I need your help. If you believe that regular people should decide elections, then please chip in $3 or more today.
This isn’t about me or the outcome of one election.
This election will be a test of the model that got us here. We’ll learn whether it’s still true that a grassroots campaign can elect a president — whether ordinary Americans are in control of our democracy in the face of massive spending.
I believe we can do this. When all of us chip in what we can, when we can, we are the most powerful force in politics.
But today is the day to prove it. Donate now:
https://donate.barackobama.com/Outraised
Thank you — for everything you’ve done before and everything you’re doing now. It matters.
Barack
As I noted before here, there is a pattern with many Democrats that we’ve seen since the late 60s. If they get mad at or disappointed in their party they pull back and then when the Republicans get in power and use that power for such things as Supreme Court appointments, getting like minded judges at lower levels, putting sympathetic people in place in the bureaucracy, etc. Democrats bitterly complain and say the system is stacked against them. If Obama loses it’ll be blamed on big money — but, clearly, if enough Democrats gave the Obama campaign might not be vastly overspent. But Dems sitting at home on election day and not reaching into their pockets will mean one thing: more complaining starting January 20 that the system is stacked against them. The truth: forces outside a political party are not always the reason why a party wins — or loses.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.