President Joe Biden’s campaign has already seen a major slowdown in donations and officials are bracing for a seismic fundraiser, according to four sources close to the re-election effort, after the fallout from the debate nearly two weeks ago took a heavy toll on operations. .
“It’s already disastrous,” one source close to Biden’s re-election bid said of the fundraiser.
Another source close to Biden’s re-election bid said the Biden campaign was “absolutely locked in money.”
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Two of the sources said it was on track to drop by half – “or more” – from only major donors this month. Sources stressed that the donations were very low.
“Donors are negative. They talked to the president. The call seemed so contrived to people that they weren’t getting it,” said one person close to the campaign, referring to a recent national fundraising call between Biden and donors. “They called the most loyal, courageous people … There were no difficult questions for the President.”
Initially, after the debate, the campaign reported an increase in donors. However, according to sources, this quickly fell apart.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign pushed back on the idea that fundraising was down. “It’s not accurate,” spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said. “In grassroots fundraising, the first seven days of July were the best start to the month in the campaign — and many of them were first-time donors. On the high-dollar side, that’s what we had. friends He’s gotten the most out of the debate.”
Hitt did not share after the discussion how many donors have reached the maximum donation level allowed by federal law.
One person close to the re-election effort said earlier this week that the campaign believed major donors who had threatened to jump ship after the debate would come around — if not to help Trump by sitting out the race.
“If major donors don’t come through, we’re going to do it without them,” Biden aides said privately.
Several unscheduled fundraisers are in early planning for the month, one of the sources said.
But on Wednesday, several people close to the re-election effort doubted that, saying they could already see evidence of the intensity of concern about Biden’s ability to win in November.
One Biden donor said he fears the president’s re-election bid is out of touch with reality and could repeat the shenanigans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, leading to dangerously flawed assessments of Biden’s standing in the race.
The source said he was surprised by the campaign’s apparent credibility, as well as Biden’s confidence, even though publicly released data showed Biden trailing Trump in key states.
Doubts about Biden exceed his cognitive abilities. The president’s positive talk about the vote, such as in an interview with ABC, sounded “actually quite Trumpian,” the donor said, questioning where donors were getting their information.
“Donors, they say, well, wait a minute, what kind of surveys are they looking at? What inquiries should we be looking at?’ he said.
“It’s broader, ‘Is the group around the president really in touch with what’s going on?’ Are people deceiving themselves? So everything they deliver is some kind of bubble reflection?” he said.
Some of Biden’s top fundraisers won’t reach out to their lucrative networks because they aren’t sure if Biden will run at the convention, despite the president saying he’s staying in the race, according to one of Biden’s fundraisers.
“You can’t go to somebody because somebody might say, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know he had dementia,'” said one of Biden’s top packers. “Now it’s like somebody’s asking, ‘Do you want to see a movie?’ what the f—ing movie is playing.'”
A top donor to Biden this month, Amy Goldman Fowler, explained why in a statement.
“I have been a long-time admirer of the president and continue to support his re-election efforts. The Biden Administration’s accomplishments are many, and they are consequential. I am proud of what he has accomplished. Yesterday, I reiterated my support by making an additional significant contribution to President Biden’s campaign fund.”