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The Campaign Spot

Election-driven news and views . . . by Jim Geraghty.


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Obama’s Campaign Warchest Growth vs. U.S. Economic Growth

Hmmm.

President Obama has set a goal of collecting $60 million for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee for the fundraising quarter that ends in six days, a campaign source said today.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asks, “Anyone smell ‘expectations game’ being played by Team Obama with $60 million 2ndQ fundraising ‘goal’? They need to average more than $100 million over seven quarters to match 2008.”

Last year, Obama raised $745 million. He’s talking about raising a billion this year – an increase of 34.2 percent.

Since 2008, the U.S. economy, as measured by real Gross Domestic Product, has grown 2.6 percent in 2009 and 2.9 percent in 2010. The Obama administration projects 3.1 percent growth in 2011 and 4.1 percent growth in 2012.

Even under Obama’s probably-too-optimistic projections, the U.S. real GDP will have grown from $12.88 trillion in 2009 (it was $13.11 trillion in 2008) to $13.99 trillion in 2012, or roughly 8.6 percent. (Using 2008 as a baseline, real GDP growth will have grown 6.7 percent.)

In other words, Obama’s campaign warchest is projected to grow at roughly four times the growth rate of U.S. real GDP.

Of course, as we all know from the unemployment chart, projections surrounding the Obama administration tend to be less than completely reliable.

Tags: Barack Obama

New on The Campaign Spot. . .


COMMENTS   3

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HistoryBuff
   06/27/11 13:30

The US Supreme Court, Mr Gerehgty, JUST RULED that elections are governed by "whoever has the most money, has the most free speech".

Deal with it.

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allo108
   06/27/11 13:45

It is 'Geraghty', which can be double-checked by using the byline at the top.

President Obama should be allowed to raise however much money he wants, assuming it's not from overseas (Which his campaign didn't bother checking in 2008.). He shouldn't then go and say the rest of us need to have our campaign fund-raising limited - which he tried to do attacking the Citizens United ruling.

Obama would also get less criticism about his fundraising if he spent nearly as much effort growing the economy. He has not done so and has actually done more to cripple the economy. And unfortunately, the rest of America will have to deal with the mess Obama made long after he has left office.

So yeah, we will deal with it. We don't have a choice living with the realities of Obama's decisions.

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Brice2
   06/27/11 17:17

Yeah, you confiscate nearly a trillion dollars (some of it from the very same people history buff whines about, who I guess shouldn't be able to comment on it), and give it to all of your buddies. Should it be real difficult to get a billion back?

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