Is Obama Running Outta Ammo?
From Neil Munro:
“President Barack Obama on Thursday claimed he was outspent in his 2004 Senate election race, even though he had almost six times as much money as his opponent. Later in the day, Obama claimed “we were outspent” in the 2008 presidential race, despite out-raising all other candidates.
“I got outspent when I ran [the] first time for Senate,” he claimed as he was ending his heated campaign-trail speech in Maumee, Ohio.
Obama was misleading.
The Federal Election Committee’s website shows that Obama’s campaign claimed $14,807,432 in donations by December 2004.
In contrast, his opponent, Alan Keyes, had only $2,545,325, according to the FEC.”
So why would Obama just flat out lie about his campaign finances in 2004 and 2008? It’s easy to check. The Open Secrets website has the raw numbers from 2008. Obama raised and spent twice as much as McCain. It wasn’t even close.
Obama has been falling behind in fundraising and that could be part of his argument. The Obama campaign still hasn’t released their numbers for June, which probably means the numbers are not good. But money is only part of the situation. The Obama campaign has been desperately trying to define Romney negatively for the past three months and nothing is sticking. By now, Romney should have been viewed as an evil Wall Street capitalist drinking the blood of his poor victims wearing Magic Underwear and hating women. But, that isn’t the case.
From the most recent CNN/ORC poll, they found Romney’s unfavorable rating was lower than Obama’s. In fact, Romney’s unfavorable rating has gone down since March. Romney has a more favorable than unfavorable rating among women. The only region that has an unfavorable rating for Romney was the Northeast. The other three regions all had positive views of Romney.
Remember, this isn’t the numbers supporting a candidate. This is the favorability ratings. But Obama was supposed to have “killed” Romney by now. Obama’s chances to define Romney are slipping by, if not completely gone at this point. Romney and the conservative media have responded to and blocked every attempt by the Obama camp to smear him. That’s one reason Obama’s getting so desperate.
Now he’s losing the cash campaign as well. USA Today is saying Obama is winning by two points in swing states and that is because of his ads. It reads like thin sauce and I'm a bit suspicious. Two points isn't much of a bump given his huge ad buy and the results of the CNN favorability findings. It again begs the question why Obama is outright lying about his previous campaign finances if everything is so rosy.
The campaigns will continue battling but the vacation season is upon us. Until the conventions, many people will tune out defining characteristics manuevering from both camps. The cake is baked. The table is set. We will now see who wins on the battlefield of ideas. Obama doesn’t have much ammo in that department. He’ll be shooting blanks.