The Hill
Democrats insist they’re cheered by President Biden’s recent fundraising numbers, fretful about eventual voter turnout for the octogenarian incumbent and frustrated by potential 2024 spoilers and distractions — from primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a third-party drive by mysteriously bankrolled No Labels.
The Hill put Biden at the top of its list of fundraising winners as the Federal Election Commission reported donations at the close of the year’s second quarter.
Together with the Democratic National Committee, the Biden campaign and joint fundraising committees reported on Friday raising $72 million, an impressive total considering that many Democratic voters say they’re lukewarm about the 80-year-old’s bid for a second term, according to polls. Although members of his party have knocked Biden for a Rose Garden-style, slow start to reelection, the president has $77 million in cash on hand. Incumbency in presidential years has some advantages.
Doubts have swirled around Biden’s candidacy because his favorability rating is stuck in the low 40s amid concerns about his age and GOP attacks on his mental acuity. The DNC and the White House want donor activity to tell a different story, especially among small-dollar donations from the grassroots, which averaged $39 among nearly 400,000 contributors in the second quarter.
The small-dollar online money spigot that helped Biden smash fundraising records during his 2020 presidential campaign has not yet turned on, and there are signs that it may be months before it does (The New York Times).
I’m not sure which is harder: Getting people to focus on the campaign, or getting people excited about it,” a longtime Democratic fundraiser told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity.
CNN: Biden campaign officials, defending the difference compared with former President Obama’s haul as he sought a second term, point to a “very different” political climate that they say has made grassroots fundraising more challenging across the board this year, with political fatigue setting in on both the right and the left.
Kennedy, who is challenging Biden for the nomination and polling in the mid-double-digits in recent surveys, ran into a buzzsaw of controversy over the weekend after The New York Post published a video of the candidate saying the COVID-19 virus was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. His remarks to a private gathering in New York City stirred renewed accusations that he spreads conspiratorial misinformation, embellished with antisemitism and racism. Kennedy said the Post report was “wrong” and that he’d been speaking off-the-record about “bioweapons” (The New York Post).
“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said, according to the Post’s video. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Kennedy on Thursday is scheduled to testify to a GOP-led House committee about federal censorship of conservative ideas, an element of Republican political talking points.
- NewsNation: Kennedy declined during a recent town hall to commit to supporting Biden if he’s the party’s nominee.
- New York magazine Intelligencer: Kennedy’s conspiracy theories finally get around to the Jews.
- The Hill: Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison condemned Kennedy’s remarks in a tweet. “These are deeply troubling comments and I want to make clear that they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party,” Harrison wrote. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) tweeted, “Hard to imagine a son who has done more to dishonor his father’s name than RFK Jr.”
- New York Post: Likely Green Party candidate Cornel West says Biden committed “crime against humanity” against Black Americans.
Democrats who back Biden want to keep control of the Senate and worry about third-party presidential candidates siphoning votes in make-or-break battleground states next year. Tonight they’ll be listening attentively to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has not said whether he’ll seek Senate reelection in a state former President Trump won with ease. Manchin is appearing at a No Labels town hall, flirting with an independent bid for president, The Hill’s Al Weaver reports.
“Joe is America’s biggest political tease, and I trust that he’ll make a judgment to run for reelection in West Virginia,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told The Hill. “I hope he will.”
No Labels chairman Joe Lieberman, a former Connecticut senator and former vice presidential candidate, said Sunday the nonprofit won’t play a “spoiler” role to tilt next year’s election results if polls suggest that possibility (ABC News and Reuters).
“We’re not in this to be spoilers,” Lieberman said, arguing the centrist group is in search of a unity ticket. No Labels today plans to unveil its agenda in New Hampshire, an early primary state.
Related
- Mother Jones: Top Democratic-run firms won’t discuss their work for No Labels, which refuses to disclose the source of its funding. Media reports have identified several major donors with GOP ties.
- The Wall Street Journal: The 2024 election is a fight over America’s way of life, according to interviews with likely voters.
- The Washington Post: Key takeaways from the latest campaign finance reports.
- The New York Times: Thirty years after Congress ordered that papers related to the John F. Kennedy assassination be made public with limited exceptions, Biden on June 30 declared “final certification” of files, even though 4,684 documents remain withheld in whole or in part. Going forward, agencies will decide any future disclosures that may be warranted. Candidate Kennedy Jr. recently accused the government of orchestrating a “60-year cover-up” in his uncle’s killing
