On his first HBO show since he announced he was giving a cool $1 million to President Obama's super PAC, comedian Bill Maher said something that this blog has written about on several occasions over the past year: that the idea that Obama is going to be able to raise $1 billion in his re-election bid is always presented as a given, when in fact he might very well fail to raise that incredibly lofty figure.
The reason the media and Obama's GOP opponents frequently invoke that number is natural. In 2007-2008, the Obama campaign raised more money — roughly $743 million — than any other candidate has in the history of running for U.S. president, and since spending seems to go up every four years, why not round it off to a cool billion?
But let's be honest. That would be 25 percent more raised than when the American left was hog-wild crazy about the Obama phenomenon. Passions have cooled to some extent, and frankly, there's less big money to spend on a lot of things in 2012 vs. 2008.
Arch-conservative Karl Rove says that Obama is actually struggling to raise funds. In his column this week in the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove writes that "despite their public bravado about the supposed damage the lengthy primary season is doing to the GOP candidates, Team Obama is worried. They know the recovery is weak, voters are reluctant to give the president much credit for whatever good economic news there is, and GDP growth is likely to slow from last year's fourth quarter pace of 3% (on an annual basis)."
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2012.