One of the immediate knock-on effects of the urgent call by Hollywood A-lister and prominent Democrat George Clooney for US president Joe Biden to withdraw from this year’s election concerns the slowing inflow of dollars to the party’s election war chest.
Clooney helped organise the mammoth fundraiser in Los Angeles on June 15th that raised more than $28 million (about €26 million) for the Biden-Harris presidential ticket. That event took place at the end of a heavy transatlantic travel schedule for Biden which, he has claimed, contributed to his alarming debate performance against Donald Trump 12 days later.
Since then, the number of heavyweight party donors calling on the president to make way for an alternative Democratic candidate has grown and there are fears the rate of fundraising has slowed.
On Thursday, Biden’s position appeared to be eroding rapidly, amid reports that his closest aides and advisers were discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race while his own campaign was secretly testing Kamala Harris’s popularity, suggesting it was preparing for that very scenario.
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Despite repeated assertions from the White House that the president had no intention of quitting the election, two New York Times reports suggested his efforts to keep his candidacy afloat were close to foundering.
The newspaper reported on its website that Biden’s campaign’s analytics team was quietly testing the strength of Harris, the vice-president, among voters in a match-up against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. Biden has consistently argued that he has the best chance of beating Trump, citing polling evidence.
A separate report suggested that unnamed longtime aides and advisers to the president had become convinced in recent days that his campaign to beat Trump in the election was doomed and were trying to find ways of persuading him of their argument.
In keeping with the rolling debate over Biden’s candidacy, opinions are split as to the true impact on campaign finances. An unnamed Democratic fundraiser told the Financial Times that the mood among loyal donors has palpably shifted against Biden in the fortnight since the debate.
“It’s really hard to raise any money whatsoever,” said the fundraiser. “Since the debate, [donors] went from not being enthusiastic to now just being angry.”
Those reservations were this week echoed by Abigail Disney, of the Disney company, who said on the CNBC news channel that she did not believe Biden could defeat Trump in November. Her decision to withdraw support was based on her belief that the consequences of the president – whom she described as “a good man” “has served his country admirably” – remaining in the race would be “dire”.
A Biden campaign spokesperson responded that Disney had not contributed directly to it this cycle and insisted that overall the state of fundraising has remained positive, with some $38 million raised since the debate. Almost 80 per cent of that figure reportedly came through small-scale donations. And in his defiant messages confirming that he intends to remain in the race, Biden has continued to emphasise the role of the small donor to the overall effort, saying in an interview: “I don’t care what the millionaires think.”
However, he participated in a private call with donors earlier this week to try to persuade them to maintain their support and in the hours afterwards was boosted by a maximum allowed contribution of $929,600 from former retail executive Peter Lowy, who said: “I am a businessman and I base my decisions on results.”
It was a rare show of unequivocal support for the embattled president in a week defined by ambivalent messaging from his party colleagues. Four years ago, Biden broke records when he was the first presidential candidate to raise more than $1 billion on his way to defeating Donald Trump. A statement from the Biden campaign rejected reports that fundraising has dried up this month, arguing that “the first seven days of July were the best start to the month of the campaign”. – Additional reporting: Guardian
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