Biden’s Fundraising: Covering the Hype, Bailing on the Reality
A day before filing its fundraising data with the FEC, Joe Biden’s campaign released a video that made some extravagant claims about its 2nd-quarter fundraising, some others it tried to present as extravagant. Despite some very questionable assertions, the press reported this. “Biden Raises $72 Million Since Announcing Reelection, Doubling Trump Over Same Stretch,” headlined USA Today. The New York Times (in a story headlined “Biden and DNC. Announce $72 Million in Fund-Raising, a Substantial Haul”) quoted a Biden partisan’s spin:
“‘This is proof positive that this party and its people and the country believe in Joe Biden and the accomplishments of this administration,’ said Henry R. Muñoz III, a former Democratic National Committee finance chairman. ‘This reaffirms Joe Biden’s appeal to the working people and everyday heroes of this country.’”
Mediaite: “Biden Doubles Trump’s Fundraising Haul, Bringing In Whopping $72M In Second Quarter,”
“‘The Biden-Harris team dramatically outraised the announced totals from every GOP candidate running for president, including Donald Trump by more than 2:1 and Ron DeSantis by more than 3:1,’” the president’s campaign said in a statement.”
Well, it turned out the actual data didn’t live up to this hype, and that part isn’t getting much press attention. This is an adaptation of a Twitter thread I’ve written on the subject in the last few days. Scrappy and perhaps not up to the standards of my usual articles, it’s hopefully worth the effort to reproduce it here.
The loud claims by the Biden camp should have raised immediate concerns, in that they were at odds with Biden’s history — beyond the usual corporate and financial elites he serves, Biden has always been a very poor fundraiser. Only a few weeks ago, Politico reported that Democratic bundlers and donors were expressing anxiety about Biden’s fundraising prowess, in the face of less than stellar results.
The Biden campaign’s Friday video said the Biden campaign, the Biden Victory Fund (Biden’s joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee and all 50 state Democratic parties) and the DNC itself raised $72 million, from 400,000 donors. “There’s only one word [for this], said Biden campaign chair Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Blockbuster.” Multiple press outlets repeated the Biden campaign’s claim that its $77 million cash-on-hand “represents the highest total amassed by a Democrat at any comparable point in history.”
The reality is that Biden’s numbers are quite poor. ABC News notes that in Q2 in 2019, the Trump campaign, its joint fundraising org and the Republican National Committee had raised $105 million. A similar combo by Obama and the Democrats way back in 2011 raised $86 million from 550,000 donors. A chart from Axios shows these numbers adjusted to 2023 dollars:
So Biden, with $72 million from 394,000 donors, hasn’t done well.
The video is positively covered in grass. It says that, “thanks to the support of grassroots donors across the country,” Team Biden has raised this money, claims “we’ve seen incredible enthusiasm” for Biden. “Our team’s strength is our grassroots supporters,” says their coalition is “powered by grassroots donors.”
The “incredible enthusiasm” part is easy to address. Biden’s job approval numbers went into “majority disapprove” only a few months into his presidency. Even large majorities of Dems have been telling pollsters for a year that they don’t want Biden to run again. So no, there isn’t “incredible enthusiasm” for Biden, Such judgments are subjective but while it’s to be expected that any incumbent will try to offer up positive spin on behalf of his own rule, it does come across as delusional — at best, an indication of a candidate with little understanding of the difficult task he faces and at worst, like something one would see in state-controlled media under some dictatorship.
The video makes several more specific claims about that $72 million. This image is from the video itself.
Small-dollar donations mean a campaign has broader support and isn’t just funded by a relative handful of Big Money sources. For decades, Clintonite politicians argued it was necessary to prostitute their offices to well-heeled interests in order to remain competitive with other pols who take the bribes allowed by the broken campaign finance system. During his 2016 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, progressive Bernie Sanders exposed this as a self-serving lie peddled by dirty pols and proved that small donations from supporters provided an entirely credible alternative. Since then, progressive Democratic candidates have taken pride in their grassroots support. So those last two claims in that video sound particularly impressive.
They’re also huge red flags. Biden’s campaign held 38 mega-dollar fundraisers in wealthy alcoves around the U.S. in Q2. Those don’t lead to “donations under $200” or “grassroots donations.” At the same time, contributions to the Biden Victory Fund are supposed to be shared by the DNC and the state parties, which allows wealthy individuals to give nearly $1 million — many, many times the normal legal limit. It isn’t set up that way to foster grassroots donations. Even Sanders, who virtually reinvented small-dollar fundraising, was never able to get anything like “97% of donations under $200,” and the odds of plutocrat-pal Biden managing it are nil. The weasel-wording of “average grassroots donation” segregates such donations from others without explaining how. Typically, a donation under $200 is a good guide here, but Biden and the Dems didn’t raise $68.9 million — 97% of $72 million — with donations that average $39.
On Saturday, Biden’s campaign filed with the FEC and the real picture began to emerge. The New York Times reported that “the Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund… collected $10.2 million from small donors — defined as those who gave $200 or less.”
That’s not “97%” of $72 million.
It isn’t dealing with the whole $72 million either, in that it doesn’t include the part that only went to the DNC, but those numbers, whatever they may turn out to be, aren’t even going to be in the same galaxy as anything that justifies the Biden campaign’s Friday claims about small donors. There’s also a potential issue with including the Victory Fund, in that a significant chunk of the money given to it is supposed to be earmarked for the state Dem parties. It’s unclear from the Times story — or any other press account this writer has been able to find — whether the Victory Fund money claimed by Biden is the portion that is actually supposed to be used by his campaign or includes those state parties.[1]
Reid Epstein, the Times reporter, notes that “Mr. Biden’s campaign highlighted an array of statistics to promote its grass-roots donor operation,” and debunks some of those claims but doesn’t get into the more seriously mendacious ones. For example, Epstein reports that Biden’s filing shows 21% of funds to his campaign and the Biden Victory Fund coming from small donors, then notes that Trump, at the comparable point, raised 35% of his funds from small donors. Unconscionably, Epstein doesn’t touch Biden’s claims that “97%” of his donations were under $200, or that his “average grassroots donation” was “$39” But it does point out the real source of Biden’s actual funding:
“[T]he president’s finance reports show that he is far more dependent on the wealthiest donors than Mr. Trump was in his re-election bid or Mr. Biden’s opponents were in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.
“Ten donors, including Mr. Katzenberg, Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the Maryland hotel magnate, gave $500,000 or more to the Biden Victory Fund. Another 82 donors contributed $100,000 or more.”
Biden’s campaign has chided Republicans for allegedly poor fundraising.
“‘The numbers are in, and there’s no hiding the stunning and embarrassing lack of enthusiasm for the Republican candidates running for president. President Biden and Vice President Harris significantly out-raised the entire GOP field last quarter, out-raising Donald Trump by more than 2:1 and Ron DeSantis by more than 3:1,’ the Biden-Harris campaign’s communications director, Michael Tyler, said in a statement.”
But how much did Biden’s actual reelection campaign — minus the padding of the Victory Fund and the DNC — raise in Q2? Only $19.9 million of his “$72 million.” This compares to $20.1 million by Ron DeSantis’ campaign and $17.7 million by Trump’s campaign.
The managers of Joe Biden’s Twitter account have trolled abut Biden’s allegedly superior fundraising over the Republicans. Beneath the laughable “powered by the grassroots” legend, they tweeted this chart:
That’s using the more expansive (and questionable) $72 million, Trump’s total includes money to a pro-Trump super PAC, etc., but even these figures (which don’t cover the entire Repub field) show that those looking to unseat Biden collectively raised $72.5 million to “his” $72 million,[2] and that’s before one gets to any of the money raised by the Republican National Committee (while “Biden’s” total includes that raised by the DNC). Is this really anything to crow about?
Corrupt politicians selling their potential future office to the highest bidder always makes for a disgusting spectacle. Biden’s current efforts to do this while cosplaying as Bernie Sanders are particularly deplorable. A few days after Biden’s FEC filing — and after hyping Biden’s pre-filing claims — the press has largely been AWOL in calling this out. That needs to change.
— j.
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[1] In 2016, Hillary Clinton and the Dems turned their early Victory Fund into a straight-up money-laundering operation. Wealthy individuals were allowed to give many times the legal limit on the premise that a large portion of the money would go to the state parties for use by downballot candidates but those state parties were, instead, just used as a front to reroute the money back for use by Clinton and were left with nothing. A completely dysfunctional Federal Election Commission never touched this. Everyone involved in it should have gone to prison but no charges were ever brought. Dems may be planning a repeat. The money from the Biden Victory Fund should be watched very carefully.
[2] Biden’s Dem opponents, who are also looking to unseat him, have also raised money. Robert Kennedy Jr. raised $6.3 million in Q2; Marianne Williamson raised nearly $1 million.
