I have a friend who donates $4 a week ... I donate tiny amounts at regular amounts too .. says an awful lot about who is behind Obama.

I had to admit to myself that the *only* reason I haven't donated is that I don't want to be pestered once they have my contact information. I decided it's a small price to pay, and I can just thow out all the fliers and delete all the e-mails. So I just made my first ever Obama contribution.

It really isn’t how much the campaigns raise that will make a difference, it’s how they frame their argument for remaining 31 days.

Mitt’s outstanding performance in the first debate already energized their contributors (and yes, I contributed after weeks of not), which would have been continuing to drop off otherwise. Mitt did not just win the first debate, he rescued the election for the Republicans. The real Mitt emerged, the moderate Mitt, and unless he flubs the remaining debates he will win because:

- Of the independent and swing voters, those center and right-of-center, who didn't want to compromise their ideological principals by voting for Obama but also didn't trust “the devil they did not know” are now comfortable that Romney is not only a suitable replacement for the Oval Office, but a superior replacement.

- Clearly Romney will break the gridlock in Congress because he is a moderate. Obama is the rigid ideologue. Obama has not met with John Boehner for over a year. Obama, essentially, doesn't enjoy the challenge in this crucial piece of presidential politics as Reagan did with O’Neill, and as Clinton did with Gingrigh. Remember Obama saying Republicans are welcome to come along for the ride but will have to sit in the back seat? Romney has the experience of being a fairly successful governor in a state working with a larger opposition in the legislature.

- Obama can justly claim that Romney has not provided satisfactory answers of just how much revenue can be made up by losing loopholes and tax deductions for the wealthy; likewise, Romney can question how Obama can claim that Romney’s policies will increase taxes on the middle class. So speaking to the “laymen in economics” voters who are among the swing voters, you can educate yourself by reading their respective lofty plans on their web sites. Then, thirsting for more guidance, you might read Paul Krugman at the New York Times, but remain confused and go read the Wall Street Journal, but are still confused and read a piece in The Nation. At some point, voters that are not skilled in economics are going to have to go with their gut on this one. That could, I think, do very well for Romney.

@2: You don't even have to delete them, just add their domain to your junk email block sender list.

@3: good luck with that.

@#4
Math isn't hard, though apparently you find comprehension to be a challenge.

The numbers again:
$181 million donated in September
1,825,813 people donated in September
567,000 were new donors.
98 percent of donations were $250 or less.
The average contribution was $53.

So: there are two possibilities:
(1) the mean contribution was $53. This means there were 3.4 million donations. Since there were 1.8 million donors, the average donor contributed (almost) twice. This is easy to imagine, especially if many people contributed $10-20 a few times (see the above commenter who's subscribed for a $4 donation every week), or contributed once and bought a car decal another time.
(2) The median contribution was $53. In this case, the mean contribution was probably rather higher than the median, and the average donor likely contributed once, or close to once. If say 25% of contributions were $100 and up (with only 2% being $250 and up), it would be very easy to get the numbers to match.

I think (1) is quite likely ("average" usually means "mean", and many people have frequently contributed very small amounts). But either is possible. Remember, the records these numbers are based on are public - so it's fairly inconceivable the numbers aren't accurate. Any lie would be easily exposed, to huge embarrassment.

In either case, the facts remain that Obama is - again - running a campaign that is massively funded by a huge number of donors, the vast majority of whom gave a modest amount. Critically, the vast majority of Obama's money has come from people whose total contributions were at most a couple hundred dollars - he's not just hiding a few big donors behind a cloud of small fry. Romney's official campaign funding has come mostly in $2000 checks, and the money for his actual campaign effort is coming mostly in $30,000 checks to the RNC and in unregulated and undisclosed multimillion dollar contributions to "independent" advocacy groups.

Gay Dude:"Rmoney will beat the gridlock in Congress because he is a moderate."

What are you smoking? Obama is a moderate. Republican teabaggers will not work with him because he is not a republican.

And Rmoney is still gonna lose in November.

@3

Here's your "rigid idealogue":

(These articles are from last year, but still illustrate the foolishness of GDfR's claim.)

http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/…

How can that be? How did a president who clearly understands climate change, supports serious efforts to reduce pollution, and respects our scientific institutions come to be as ineffective as his predecessor, who did none of the above? In a word, he compromised. Again and again. Pundits can't get enough of this evaluation of the Obama presidency, largely because it's true: Obama is hell-bent on being seen as a great compromiser who can bridge the political divide with his unparalleled reasonableness. Republicans have responded to his proverbial fig leaf by refusing to compromise on anything (see: the debt ceiling debacle, health care reform, anything), in order to make him look foolish and ineffective.

When Republicans refused to vote to extend the debt ceiling unless they got deep federal spending cuts, Obama and the Democrats caved. When industry complained that the proposed EPA rules designed to rein in dangerous ozone pollution were too strict, Obama caved. And so on and so forth. Evidently, this propensity for caving, er, compromising, pertains not just to big federal battles, but the more mundane ones as well. When a lobbyist for the oil company shows up at OIRA's door and complains that a new pollution rule will hurt business, it turns out that more likely than not, he'll at least partially get his way -- and public health and the environment suffer as a result.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogu…

Obama's "compromise" principle follows a consistent pattern. His opening bid is to move more than halfway in the direction of Republican principles. When Republicans refuse to consider Obama's compromise proposals and take the economy hostage, Obama unilaterally offers up further compromises without getting anything back in return, which only encourages further Republican intransigence.

• When Obama first appointed his economic team, he did not appoint "a team of rivals" but a "team of Rubins," drawing all of his principal economic advisors from Wall Street's allies like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Peter Orzag and Rahm Emanuel, rather than including some advisors with progressive views similar to those of Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, or James Galbraith.

• Although Obama was advised that in order to bring unemployment under control, a stimulus package in the order of $1.2 trillion was needed, Obama's opening bid was on the order of $700 billion dollars. He then negotiated a package that was made up nearly half of unstimulative tax cuts. Rather than reducing the unemployment rate below 8% as Obama administration officials promised, unemployment is now 9.2% as the stimulus is coming to an end. This alone could lead to Obama's defeat in 2012.

• Rather than proposing Medicare For All, and then perhaps compromising on a health care reform package with a strong public option, Obama began with a health care plan modeled on Republican proposals originally set out by Bob Dole and implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, then made backroom deals to give away the public option and to ban Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.

• A few weeks before the BP oil spill, Obama proposed expanding offshore drilling in the hopes of gaining Republican support for the previously Republican idea of cap and trade. He gained no Republican support and a few weeks later, BP began gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, with no Republican support for the Republican-originated cap and trade concept, it died a quiet death in the Senate.

• Rather than demanding that the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire at the end of 2010, Obama began his negotiations with Republicans by offering to extend the Bush tax cuts on everyone. Instead, he could have demanded the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire, and if Republicans failed to vote for this and allowed all the tax cuts to expire, gone to the American people and forced the Republicans to renew only the middle class tax cuts in the lame duck session.

• Obama's negotiations on the debt ceiling with Republican hostage-takers who threaten to blow up the economy if they don't get their way has been the most egregious of all. He offered up a plan made up of 75% spending cuts to 25% "revenue increases" (God forbid, not tax increases). When Republicans remained intransigent, he offered a plan with less than 10% revenue increases. Now he seems prepared to back a plan with all cuts and no guaranteed revenue increases, while cutting social security and Medicare. Moreover, he has adopted Republican talking points that reducing the deficit -- not growing jobs -- is the key to improving the economy.

One even begins to wonder if Obama doesn't view these points as "compromises" but actually has come to believe they represent the best policy. Has Obama now become captive to the conservative Washington consensus that the key to fixing the economy is austerity?

Obama's compromises fail the test. They don't move closer to implementing the Democratic principles that he should stand for. And they give away far too much, and fall far short of being the best compromises possible.

@8: A president may have to go through several meetings before his opposition in Congress will start working with him, but Obama isn't even summoning them down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yeah, what @8 says. Why would Obama even bother meeting with reps who've signed a pledge to not authorize any additional revenue under any circumstances? He could make the exact same amount of progress on budget issues by sitting in front of his computer masturbating (as an aside, that'd not have been possible in W's white house, as Barack was responsible for the first WH wi-fi. Seriously!)

@3:

I thought the Mitt we saw during the GOP Convention was the "real Mitt" - or was that the Mitt we saw during the GOP debates? Or was it the Mitt we saw in Europe? Or the one on the secret video recording? Or the one we saw in New Hampshire? Or will it be the Mitt we see during the second debate? Or an as-yet-unseen Mitt nobody even knows about yet?

That's the problem with Mitt: he changes colors more often than a chameleon in a paint factory...

Yes, Obama has only accepted $35 M from super PACs compared to Romney's $96 M.

Obama is clearly a man of the people.

As long as politicians need tons of money to run for office, they’ll be indebted to the few who can afford to give it to them.

How come they didn't spend that 181 million feeding poors?

Oh yea they want to ensure social services come out of MY pocket as a middle class taxpayer.

@15 $181 million is chump change compared to the billions in Medicaid, SNAP, and other spending they're defending from GOP cuts. A real safety net is a society-wide priority and doesn't fluctuate with the election cycle.

@15: Why are you blaming Obama's campaign?
They say "give money to us, we'll get this dude elected and he'll enact these policies". People thought "that's worth giving money to". If you want to concern trool, you should attack the people who donated the money to Obama instead of giving it to the United Way to go feed the poors.

@3: LOL throughout.

My reaction to this set of number is that either the numbers are f'd up, or the press release is f'd up.

The top line number - $181M - is almost certainly right. It's hard to mess that up.

The average contribution - $53 - is right where you'd expect it.

But the number of "new" contributors, and the ratio of established contributors to new contributors, are not reasonable, unless "new" means something new. Does it mean "new" since the 2008 cycle, instead of "new" this month? Or does it mean the campaign has trouble matching current contributions to earlier contributors?

Genuine new contributors just don't fall out of trees, relative to contributors establish over the past five and a half years. And new contributors don't usually make multiple contributions in the month they get off their asses. (Consider that the average new contributor didn't make his/her first contribution til Sept. 15.

Contra W.T. @ 7, the records are mostly not public. Only major donors - over $200 for the cycle - are disclosed . . . and if the campaign isn't accurately matching new contribs to old, they're not complying with disclosure requirements either.

There's likely a lot of action in the max donor level (basically bandwagon jumpers who have read the handwriting on the wall ... but there have been a flurry of $3 and $5 asks - which should have dragged the average donation down and driven the number of donations up.

To quote famed forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee: "Something wrong!".

Looking at the debate results, y'all should ask for your money back. Just sayin'.

I don't know what that Happy Dood for rMoney puts in his pipe but I want some cuz that shit's powerful. The blast from the hit he took just before he wrote #3 must have knocked him against a wall or something.

@#13

Yes, Obama has only accepted $35 M from super PACs compared to Romney's $96 M.

This is wildly misleading - it only counts each candidate's semi-official "independent" expenditure group, set up by and run by a former campaign aide. Back in the real world, one donor (Sheldon Adelson) has pledged to spend $100M on behalf of Romney, mostly through other independent-expenditure groups - and only $10M of that is reflected in the number you cite, and Adelson is far from alone.

@#20
I tend to assume that, yes, they are counting as new donors who've not previously given this cycle (ie for the 2012 general election). This because the reporting requirement, and indeed all the regulatory hoops through which the campaign must jump, are arranged around such criteria. You're also ignoring (1) that the Dem campaign, and especially the excitement for it, effectively started with the convention, in early September; and (2) the experience of 2012, which saw a huge jump in the number of donors to Obama's campaign in the last month or two of the campaign. You and I are the sort of people who read political blogs, so it's easy for us to forget that an awful lot of our fellow citizens are just now tuning in to the election in a serious way.
Oh, and if you think the Obama campaign - which, as you can read for example from Sasha Issenberg in his new book, is organized around a frequently updated, highly cross-referenced database of potential supporters - is losing track of its donors from donation to donation, when losing track of them risks violating the law and renders fundraising efforts ineffective, you're just getting paranoid.

If you look at who is donating the big bucks to both Romney and Obama it's the big banks such as goldman sachs , and others . also lot's of defense contractors donate millions to both .. Got to keep those wars for profits going ...

What is more interesting is that during Ron Paul's campaign in the primaries he had more individual contributions of 25 dollars or less than all other candidates combined including Barack Obama and he had more campaign donations by active duty military service members then all other candidates combined including Barack Obama.

But when you look at the stats , The big establishment status quo candidates (Obama and Romney) are both being funded heavily by banksters and daddy war bucks.....

The GOP are so evil and insane now the it makes a personable fellow like Obama with an ordinary level of corrupt influence seem like a veritable savior, even though on most things he's basically got policies slightly to the right of a 1970s Republican.

@24: Maybe, but no one cares about Ron Paul because he is an out of touch racist who thinks that the gold standard is still a viable option. This means he is insane.

Also, he is only a libertarian until it comes to womens bodies, then he wants the government to run everything.

Insane hypocrite.

@ 26 1. Ron Paul is not a racist and you have absolutely no proof to back that claim up .... He delivered babies for poor black women with no money and refused to accept their medicaid while other white doctors refused to treat them. This is all documented . He has fought to have black women released from prison who were innocent ....

Secondly the current monetary policy of printing money from thin air and then devaluating the value of the currency is INSANE and the idea of having a commondity based currency is the most Rational idea we have .

And thirdly Libertarians do not believe the Government should have any say so over peoples bodies . Yes is he is philosophically opposed to abortion but he would never use the government to impose his views on anyone . He like many believe that life begins at conception which is not an assault against women but a protection for what he deems a viable human life.

So 26 now you have been educated maybe you should reconsider your views.

I realize this thread is long-dead, but I'd just like to point out that - with the possible and highly irrelevant exceptions of the anecdotes claiming Ron Paul treated poor women for free and refused Medicaid reimbursement and that he supposedly fought to have innocent women released (which even if true would be odd for Jay Tea to deploy in disproving a charge of racism) - every word of Jay Tea's comment #27 is either false or wildly insane.

There is ample proof of Paul's racism, in his own newsletters. Goldbuggery is nuts (including within the term other "commodity-based currencies"), and every economist who doesn't sport a straightjacket has extremely lucid arguments for floating currencies, nor is there evidence for uncontrolled, inflationary sprees of money-printing in the first world in the last, say, seventy-five years. And Paul's legislative and advocacy record clearly demonstrate that his views about women's reproductive freedom are far more Handmaid's Tale than they are a refusal "to impose his views on anyone".

28 ... As far as the Newsletters from Ron Paul watch this video debunking the claim that he wrote them : http://youtu.be/rGH77lZsglU

Now as far as the black woman he treated for no pay , here is one video chronicling at least one event: http://youtu.be/8Rv0Z5SNrF4

As far as him helping a black woman get out of prison here ya go: http://www.sherrypeeljackson.org/newslet…

And as far as your comment about floating based currencies . Just look at the value of a dollar . It's almost worthless .. Keynesian economist are the ones who belong in straight jackets...... You believe you have to break windows to stimulate the economy it's ridiculous .... And Hayek won a Nobel prize for his econonmic theories ....

So soak all that up number 28 and get back to me when you have a clue

Warren Terra @ 23 -- You are mistaken: the campaign specifically described its "new" contributors as those who contributed in neither 2008 nor 2012 cycles.

You are mistaken: there is no FEC requirement to identify "new" contributors, either individually or in the aggregate.

You are mistaken: I do not ignore the convention boost, or the experience of 2012 (sic), or the campaign juggernaut infrastructure.

You may be mistaken about what "sort of people" I am. I am the sort of people what has actual experience dealing with such numbers, and the processes that generate them, inside and out.

And if you believe things don't happen just because they would violate the law and bollux fundraising if they did happen, you are very much mistaken.