NBC "News:" Biden's fundraising has dried up.
'It's already disastrous': Biden campaign fundraising takes a major hit
Sources close to the re-election efforts say fundraising is set to drop possibly by half this month. A campaign spokesperson pushed back, saying "grassroots" dollars were strong.
They're continuing to push the claim that "the elites" want Middle Class Joe out of the race, but "the people," "the grassroots" are with him.
President Joe Biden's campaign has already suffered a major slowdown in donations and officials are bracing for a seismic fundraising hit, with the fallout from a debate nearly two weeks ago taking a sizable toll on operations, according to four sources close to the re-election effort.
"It's already disastrous," one of the sources close to Biden's re-election said of fundraising.
"The money has absolutely shut off," another source close to the re-election said.
Two of the sources said this month is on a path to be down by possibly half -- "or much more," one of them said -- from large donors alone. Sources emphasized that the donations were down across the board.
"Donors are negative. They had a call with the president. The call seemed so contrived to people; I don't think they buy it," one of the people close to the campaign said, referring to a recent national fundraising call between Biden and donors. "They called on people who were the most loyal, die-hard ... There were no tough questions for the president."
Initially after the debate, the campaign reported an uptick in donors. But that quickly fell off, the sources said.
A Biden campaign spokesperson pushed back against the notion that fundraising was down. "That's not accurate," spokesperson Lauren Hitt said. "On grassroots fundraising, the first seven days of July were the best start to the month on the campaign -- and many of those were first-time donors. On the high-dollar side, we've had folks max out since the debate, as well."
Hitt didn't share how many donors have hit the maximum allowed under federal law since the debate.
One of the people close to the re-election efforts said this week that the campaign believed major donors who have threatened to jump ship after the debate would come around -- if only to avoid helping former President Donald Trump by sitting out the race.
Biden aides had said privately that "if major donors don't come along, we'll do it without them."
Biden is now suffering the most brutal humiliation. This is the worst example of the Trump Curse that I can remember.
The donors boycotting Biden may prove that "the elites" want Biden out.
On the other hand, a recent poll shows that 58% of Democrats want him out.
And most Democrats, despite their fervent belief that they are members of the aristocracy, are not elite.
The comically biased Regime newsletter the Washington Post demands that Biden prove he can beat Trump, and says that White House staff are "despondent" over the realization he can't.
Biden should provide evidence he can beat Trump, Democratic leaders say
The calls came as top union leaders, more lawmakers and even some campaign staff members expressed grave concerns about his candidacy.
Democratic leaders called on President Biden and his campaign Wednesday to provide convincing evidence of a viable path to victory amid a steady tide of bad battleground state polling and growing concerns that he cannot defeat former president Donald Trump in November.
The calls came as top union leaders expressed grave concerns about his candidacy, more members of Congress and other Democrats called on him to step aside, and even members of Biden's senior campaign staff began to exchange doubt about his prospects.
In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, some of the country's union leaders -- many of whom are strident backers of Biden -- said Americans' doubts about Biden's ability to do the job were damaging his candidacy and repeatedly asked Biden campaign officials for their plan to defeat Trump, according to two people familiar with their comments, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private comments. Two of the most outspoken leaders were Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, and Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, two of Biden's biggest labor allies.
In a statement later Wednesday, AFL-CIO leadership "unanimously voted to reaffirm its commitment" to Biden, saying, "No president has been more invested in helping workers than Joe Biden."
Senior campaign staff have started to take a more pessimistic view of Biden's chances, even as they continue to fan out in a full-court blitz to push the campaign forward and reassure allies of the president's potential to rebound.
"Overwhelmingly a majority of senior campaign staff are despondent and don't see a path," said a Democratic strategist familiar with the conversations, who like many others for this story requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal deliberations. A second person familiar with the discussions did not dispute the description.
...
Meanwhile, Democrats say the defections are likely to increase in coming days, with lawmakers and donors privately signaling that, by the end of the week, they may publicly call for Biden to drop out. They argue they do not want to embarrass Biden during the ongoing NATO summit in Washington while also giving him time to come to that conclusion on his own.
You don't want to embarrass Biden during the NATO summit?
Whoops, Biden already did that himself:
The uncertainty among high-dollar donors about giving to independent groups has made it "hard to balance the checkbook," said one fundraiser involved in the effort. "I think a lot of the large-dollar donors are going to move their funding to the House and the Senate. If Biden is going to stay in, he has got to pray that the small-dollar donors come through."