-By Warner Todd Huston
It seems that predictions have come true that Obama’s 2012 campaign for re-election would be the first “billion dollar campaign” has come true. Team Obama is now reporting that fundraising for the 2012 campaign has exceeded that of 2008 realizing over a billion dollars in campaign donations. Online donations also surpassed levels from Obama’s first run.
According to new calculations reported by TIME, online donations raised about $690 million, up from the $500 million seen in 2008.
Once all sources are tabulated, the campaign expects to exceed that daunting one billon dollar mark.
How did he do it?
“The reason is simple: the campaign brought in more small-dollar fundraising through email, social media, mobile and its website during the final months of the race than initially projected,” says TIME.
TIME also reports that Obama’s digital solicitation was quite a success.
When counting only fundraising that was initially generated by digital efforts, including email, social media, mobile and the website, the 2012 campaign raised $504 million, up from $403 million in 2008. Much of that digital campaign cash came in the final months of the campaign. September 2012, for instance, was a better month than September 2008 online. And in October 2012, when there was significant voter excitement and anxiety generated by the presidential debates, digital fundraising increased on a month-over-month basis, instead of decreasing as it did in 2008. The total number of donors to the campaign also increased in 2012, the adviser said. In all, 4.4 million individuals gave to the Obama re-election bid, up from 3.95 million in 2008.
Facebook “likes,” Twitter followers, and other social media efforts also witnessed big gains.
But we must be careful with the claim that “small donors” gave Obama his biggest gain. Obama claimed this in 2008, as well. It turned out that it wasn’t really true then. We’ll have to wait and see if the final tabulation and analysis lives up to TIME’s claim that it was small donors that did the trick this year.
Still, no matter where he got all those campaign donations, you might recall the nonsense that his campaign was peddling back in August when millions of emails were sent out pleading for money because Romney was “out fund raising” the President. Obviously that was just a falsehood cynically used by the President to engorge his campaign coffers.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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