In a nationally televised interview on Monday, President Biden fired back at wealthy Democrats who want him to end his re-election campaign, saying, “I don’t care what millionaires think.”
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Small donors, whom he had made cloudless, were coming to him.
However, in the closing hours, Mr Biden joined a private call with his top donors and fundraisers to reassure them. “It matters,” he instructed them to help them.
The reportedly contradictory messages reflect the dilemma facing the president as he confronts former President Donald J. Trump is grappling with the consequences of his abysmal debate efficiency toward undoing the momentum. To carry forward his presidential campaign, Mr Biden will likely need the support of wealthy Democratic Party supporters, but he has been one of the loudest voices calling for an end to his bid for re-election.
To placate his opposition, Mr Biden – a political candidate who has long relied on the party status quo to capitalize on his marketing campaign – has pursued a shockingly populist anti-elite message, which In many ways, an echo of Mr Trump.
The ultimatum to primary donors is that the party will lose in white areas and down-ballot races with Mr Biden on top. A growing trend of donors is insisting – at first quietly, then publicly – that stepping aside to allow an alternative nominee is risky and holding back their money until that happens.
While Mr. Biden’s campaign has currently courted wealthy Democrats, including running scheduled fundraising receptions despite uncertain enthusiasm, the president has also publicly drawn backlash from major donors, a sign of this. That he is made for the general crowd. Towards money related work. However, polls show that many ordinary Democratic voters have deep concerns about his past.
“Voters – and voters alone – decide the Democratic Party nominee,” he wrote in a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday morning. “Not the press, not pundits, not big donors, not any select group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.”
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, Mr. Biden noted, “I’m getting very frustrated with the elites” and highlighted major donors. “I want their support, but that’s not the reason I’m running,” he said.
This challenging message comes amid a new financial fact for their marketing campaign.
If Mr Biden runs, he will likely want to rely on smaller donors to compensate for the withdrawal of major donors as the race involves heavy spending on campaigning and voter mobilization.
If he is able to harness the anti-elitist sentiment in the party’s small donor base to ride out the post-debate turmoil, it will put him in the company of more populist politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s senator and representative. Can put. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. Those MPs have generated a wave of funding from small donors by calling out alleged abuses at the hands of the status quo.
“We know that high-visibility, high-intensity moments can trigger an immediate flood of small donations and that anger, resentment and resentment are powerful motivators in politics, including from small donors,” said Richard H. Pildes, a regulation teacher at Brandnew York University. who has studied the role of small donors in fueling political polarization, said in an email. “It’s also possible that we’re seeing a conflict between the base of the Democratic Party, who want Biden to remain, and the more ‘elite’ faction of big donors, who want an alternative.”
Small donors have long been valued in politics as symbols of grassroots affection, as well as a sustainable source of funding, as they may be able to give repeatedly without reaching contribution limits. Advances in online, email, and mobile fund-raising programs have allowed campaigns to use key opportunities as an alternative to soliciting contributions from supporters of liberal viewpoints.
Eaton D. Hersh, a political science professor at Tufts College who has studied the motivations of political donors, said small donors generally donate “from the heart.” “Big donors are donating more from the head than from the heart,” he said, predicting that Mr Biden’s marketing campaign would lead to “a return of big donors and therefore a relative advantage in proportion to small donors”.
Carroll L. Hamilton, a legal professional in Los Angeles who is a member of Mr. Biden’s National Finance Committee, noted that he has many supporters who “may not be million-dollar donors or hundred-thousand-dollar donors, but they care. do, and they’re going to vote, and right now they’re showing that they support our President by giving a few bucks – $5, $25, whatever they’re giving – to make a statement that they think That this president should remain in the race.”
Ms. Hamilton participated in a donor call with the president on Monday and said, “Everyone I spoke to was very reassured by him on that call.” He wondered how many major donors have singled out Mr Biden. “We have not seen mass migration at all,” he said. “I mean, there have been some people, yes, that’s true.”
In the hours following the decision, Mr Biden’s campaign said it had received a maximum donation of $929,600 from former retail executive Peter Lowery to its joint fundraiser with Democratic Party committees. The campaign also sent an email to raise money for $25 contributions, which it called “the most popular donation amount for such emails.”
“We know that $25 doesn’t seem like much to Trump’s millions,” the message said. “But we promise that your $25 – matched by the support of the thousands of people who are contributing right now – will make all the difference.”
In a comment Tuesday, Charles Luttwak, a spokesman for the Biden marketing campaign, said, “Our grassroots donors have been at full strength, setting records again and again over the past two weeks, and across our entire donor base, We will continue to raise the money needed to dominate Donald Trump on the ground and over the airwaves to win in November.
Mr Biden has raised more money from small donors than Mr Trump so far this cycle, according to a study by the nonpartisan watchdog website OpenSecrets. This could be a reversal from their 2020 face-off.
In 2016, when the Republican status quo was largely in Mr. Trump’s favor, he promoted his small-dollar fund-raising week by criticizing major donors. In times to come, she quietly courted the same wealthy workers.
Within the next 24 hours after he was convicted on 34 criminal counts in May, Mr. Trump’s campaign bolstered its small donor base, raising nearly $53 million and breaking online records for Republicans. The race equally helped him raise money and overtake Mr Biden, who had maintained a financial advantage through most of the campaign.
On the strength of the post-conviction surge, Mr Trump and his party started June with $235 million in the Cabinet, while Mr Biden and his party had $212 million.
In June, after the controversy over his fundraising, the president overtook Mr. Trump, but still entered the race with less cash available: $285 million for Mr. Trump’s operation, compared with $285 million for Mr. Biden. $240 million.
Small donors provided nearly 80 percent of the $38 million raised by the Biden campaign in the four days following the controversy, which also included the two best grassroots fund-raising days of the 2024 cycle, according to the campaign. Overall, the best pace of fund-raising was in June, which brought in $127 million, about two-thirds of which came from grassroots donors, it said.
Marketing campaign finance studies detailing the money raised will not be publicly available until closer to this pace.
An OpenSecrets study of campaign finance filings from the past in the race shows that Mr. Biden raised a very low percentage of the budget — about 43 percent — from small donors, typically thought of as people giving $200 or less. goes.
Mr Biden claimed on “Morning Joe” that “97 per cent of all the people who have contributed to us are people making less than $200 – people who have contributed less than $200.” He called it “the largest contingent ever in history.” I’m not positive about it, but I think it’s true.” (The claim is difficult to independently verify, as campaigns are not required to disclose individual donors who give $200 or less.)
John Morgan, an attorney in Florida who said he has raised more than $1 million for the Biden campaign, said in a text message that he did not think the increase in small donations would offset the defection of major donors.
However Mr. Morgan, who was planning a summer fund-raiser for Mr. Biden that is now in flux, predicted that major donors would flock back to the president’s camp if he remains in the race.
“If not,” he wrote, “Trump wins.”
Rachel Shorey Contributed to the reporting.
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