Monday, July 30, 2012

Rich Dems Are Rich People, Too!

New York Magazine ^ | Jul 27, 2012 | Jason Zengerle

Barack Obama—or, rather, “Barack Obama”—sent a downer of an e-mail to his supporters a few weeks ago. “I will be the first president in modern history,” he predicted, “to be outspent in his reelection campaign.” Not all that long ago, it looked like the president might smash the record $746 million he collected in 2008 by raking in $1 billion this time around; now the Obama team expects it will be Mitt Romney who brings in that much. There are many reasons for the reversal, including the rabid largesse of the anti-Obama side. But one key cause seems to have until recently gone oddly overlooked by the president’s fund-raising operation: Party affiliations aside, rich Democrats are still rich people, and expect to be treated as such.

A politico who travels in high-­dollar Democratic circles in New York divides the reluctant donors he knows into three categories: “A third of them were Jewish and were pissed off about Israel. Another third were from the financial sector and were mad at him because he called them ‘fat cats.’ And then a third say, ‘I raised a shitload of money for him and then I never heard from him.’ ” It’s this last group that feels most conflicted. Unlike the Democratic Likudniks and Wall Streeters, who have political or economic reasons for supporting (tacitly or explicitly) Romney, these rich Democrats don’t want to see their party lose the White House. But they also don’t want to reward Obama and his team for what they see as shoddy treatment.

(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...

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