By President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is experiencing a significant downturn in contributions, and officials are preparing for a substantial financial impact. Reports state that the aftermath of a debate two weeks ago has severely affected the campaign’s operations.
The financial strain is becoming evident as the campaign grapples with this unexpected challenge. Sources close to the effort report that the debate’s repercussions are more substantial than initially anticipated, causing a notable disruption in the campaign’s fundraising momentum, writes NBC News.
“It’s already disastrous,” one of the sources close to Biden’s re-election said of fundraising.
“The money has absolutely shut off,” another source close to the re-election said.
Two of the sources said this month is on a path to be down by possibly half — “or much more,” one of them said — from large donors alone. Sources emphasized that the donations were down across the board.
“Donors are negative. They had a call with the president. The call seemed so contrived to people; I don’t think they buy it,” one of the people close to the campaign said, referring to a recent national fundraising call between Biden and donors. “They called on people who were the most loyal, die-hard … There were no tough questions for the president.”
Initially after the debate, the campaign reported an uptick in donors. But that quickly fell off, the sources said.
The Biden campaign saw an early bump from the debate, but since has seen donation to the president’s reelection efforts have taken a major hit from his debate performance, according to CNN.
“Everything is frozen because no one knows what’s going to happen. Everyone is in wait and see mode,” one Democratic strategist told CNN, noting that donors are hyper-focused on what Biden is doing, including interviews and his news conference Thursday.
Donors often operate behind the scenes and, according to sources, have grown increasingly anxious about Biden’s candidacy following his halting debate performance last month. And on Wednesday, George Clooney, who had been among Biden’s biggest supporters and donors in Hollywood, took the remarkable step of publicly calling for him to bow out of the presidential race.”
The Biden campaign told Politico that “the first seven days of July were the best start to [a] month on the campaign — and many of those were first-time donors.”
But not everyone is buying it, and most Democrats believe the end could be near.
“They’re hoping they can be bailed out by grassroots donors,” said a Democratic donor adviser. “I don’t see any evidence of that working.”
Among wealthy donors, discontent is high. “Every single person I’ve talked to says, ‘this is not tenable. We can’t raise any money. It’s impossible.’ These are the same people who were in Atlanta for the watch party at the debate,” said a Democratic operative who works with major Democratic donors.
“We can’t find any money,” the person said.
The money drying up could also hinder the chances that Kamala Harris replaces Biden at the convention. One of the leading aspects of putting her at the top of the ticket continues to be that she would be able to use the funds raised by Biden over the past three years.
Whoever the Democrats end up nominating, they’re going to face a well-oiled campaign from the Republicans.
Donald Trump’s campaign claimed to have outpaced President Joe Biden in fundraising for the second quarter of the year, reporting a total of $331 million. The massive fundraising haul for Trump was bolstered by one of the largest single fundraising days in American history. During the 24 hours that followed the former president’s guilty verdict in New York City, the Trump campaign raised over $50 million.
[Read More: Biden Says He’s Done With This]
