Numbers on the various 2024 campaigns have just come in, and they’re telling a bleak tale for Joe Biden.
According to the campaign financial disclosures filed, Biden had $20 million while former President Donald Trump took in $22 million.
What does this look like for comparison’s sake?
It’s historically low. Biden is doing worse in terms of a war chest than most other recent candidates at the same point. Former President Obama had $37 million in 2011, while Trump had over $56 million in June 2019.
Now, it is important to note that the number doesn’t include PAC money. With Democratic Party account numbers, Biden had $77 million in the bank. Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign and political action committee raised over $35 million during the second quarter of 2023.
Most of Biden’s money is coming from wealthy donors. It’s still early, but the small donors haven’t shown up yet, and Democrats are worried.
In particular, some Democrats expressed anxiety about what they viewed as Biden’s mediocre small-dollar donor operation — a sign, they argued, that there is a lack of excitement for the president. Across the campaign and a joint-fundraising committee, Biden brought in more than $10 million from donors giving less than $200. But it was still less than half of what Obama raked in from small donors during the same period in 2011. Both were running with largely token primary opposition.
That’s despite having an email list that his campaign has said includes “close to 25 million email subscribers.”
While some big donors haven’t weighed in yet and small donors are a question, one of the wealthy donors whose contribution is raising some eyebrows is LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman who donated $699,600.00 on April 26 to the Biden Victory Fund. We’ve written about Hoffman before — he’s the guy who funded E. Jean Carroll in her suit against former President Donald Trump. He’s also the guy who took at least one trip to Epstein Island. He visited the White House five times last year, and he helped throw a fundraiser that Biden attended in California last month.
But beyond the money numbers, the other numbers that the Democrats are concerned about are his campaign numbers. People have termed his campaign “frugal.” Anyone who has seen Biden govern knows he’s not frugal. Democrats are questioning how little time and effort he seems to be putting into the campaign effort.
Biden’s campaign spent a total of $1.1 million in the second quarter of this year, a remarkably small amount that would put him behind several Democratic Senate candidates in terms of expenditures.
Biden had four people on his payroll during that time: Campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, spokesperson Kevin Munoz, and general counsel Maury Riggan. His campaign spent less than $1,500 on travel, accommodations and airfare. On rent, he spent nothing. He has not opened a campaign headquarters yet and much of his staff has been working out of the Democratic National Committee’s building.
One might think from that that he wasn’t even campaigning. Talk about a “slow pace” for the 80-year-old. He hid in the basement for the 2020 campaign, with COVID as an excuse, but he’s not going to be able to do that now, particularly not given the bad record that he has. So that’s raising questions, as a CNN report noted, from some about whether he will truly be running (even though Biden has already declared) or if there’s a replacement in the wings.
The conversations keep happening – quiet whispers on the sidelines of events, texts, emails, furtive phone calls – as top Democrats and donors reach out to those seen as possible replacement presidential candidates.
Get ready, they urge, in conversations that aides to several of the people involved have described to CNN: Despite what he has said, despite the campaign that has been announced, President Joe Biden won’t actually be running for reelection.
They feel like time is already running out and that the lack of the more robust campaign activity they want to see is a sign that his heart isn’t really in it.
It’s hard not to see Gavin Newsom posturing like a candidate in the wings.
Reporter Simon Ateba summed it up.