President Obama Brags About Being Outspent

In case you’ve tuned out your Obama fundraising e-mails, you should pay attention to this one. It’s a highly unusual e-mail for a campaign to be sending.

I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.

I’m not just talking about the super PACs and anonymous outside groups—I’m talking about the Romney campaign itself. Those outside groups just add even more to the underlying problem.

The Romney campaign raises more than we do, and the math isn’t hard to understand: Through the primaries, we raised almost three-quarters of our money from donors giving less than $1,000, while Mitt Romney’s campaign raised more than three-quarters of its money from individuals giving $1,000 or more.

And, again, that’s not including the massive outside spending by super PACs and front groups funneling up to an additional billion dollars into ads trashing me, you, and everything we believe in.
We can be outspent and still win—but we can’t be outspent 10 to 1 and still win.

It’s hard to remember now, but just a few months ago, Republicans were bitching and moaning about President Obama’s “billion-dollar campaign” during the primary. They probably knew that whoever would win the Republican nomination would eventually surpass the Obama campaign’s fundraising—Republicans are nothing if they’re not friends with big industry, and big industry has access to all the big money—but it sounded good when they were kissing babies in Iowa pizza joints.

If you’ve been waiting to start donating to the Obama campaign, I don’t think you should wait much longer. Now is the time when the campaigns are preparing their infrastructure for the election, and the Obama campaign is going to need a flawless volunteer staff in swing states and states where Republicans are bragging about stacking the deck. Of course, the campaign could be doing a better job with their own fundraising, too. When the Supreme Court announces their health care decision on Thursday, Obama’s team had better be prepared to turn that into a huge moneymaking opportunity, no matter how the verdict comes down.