Obama's money raising failure

John Podhoretz:

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...  Mitt Romney now has a huge cash-in-hand advantage going into the fall, because Obama spent so much of his own campaign’s money in the summer while Romney stayed out of it and let the Super PACs advertise for him. 

The Super PACs came into existence as a result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. Obama criticized the decision so heatedly that he and his team spent most of 2011 waving off the idea of Democratic Super PACs — until they saw the money pouring into right-wing coffers. 

If you read in-the-tank journalists on the subject, like Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, you’d think this was due to the extremely moral and deeply principled approach of the Obama campaign. 

Nonsense. Throughout 2011, the word in the political world was that Obama’s people thought they could raise $1 billion on their own. That didn’t seem unreasonable, after they’d raised $750 million in 2008. If they could top $1 billion, why would they need the complication of Super PACs run by people they did not control? 

In fact, the fear of that $1 billion juggernaut (“aimed like a heat-seeking missile at one guy,” as a rueful Republican senator told me by way of explaining why several promising GOP candidates opted out of the 2012 race) was part of the reason Karl Rove and others found it so easy to raise money for their Super PACs. 

Well, Obama won’t raise anywhere near $1 billion. He’s likely to raise less this time than last. Big Democratic givers are shying away. 

Mayer and others suggest that once Obama decided to bless Super PACs on his behalf in the spring, it was too late for them to get cracking. 

Nonsense on stilts, again. It’s never too late. Obama supporters haven’t raised major Super PAC dollars because the donors aren’t there. 

So now Romney has $65 million or so more than Obama to spend in the fall, and the pro-Romney SuperPACs have money in the bank as well. If the ads are working, and equal spending has kept the race at par, logic suggests that once Romney starts shelling out a lot more, Obama will be toast.
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He will be toast if the ads are more effective than the ones run by Obama.  The reason you are going to be seeing a lot of ads from disappointed Obama voters is that they appear to be the most persuasive at moving undecided voters into believing it is OK to vote against Obama.

One of the main reasons Obama is having so much trouble raising money is that he alienated many of the large donors who helped him four years ago, and his small donor base is discouraged by the failure of his administration to change things for the better.