Former Vice President Joe Biden is facing more and more challenges. His frontrunner was once clear in the Democratic presidential contest, but now he is having trouble keeping up with the finances of his rivals. Biden’s campaign staff is urging donors to “dig deep,” according to the New York Times.
The former vice president’s campaign is trying to dismiss fears that Biden is facing money woes, but the fact that the donors need to be reassured is an obvious concern. Biden now has $9 million cash on hand, a fraction of the $33.7 million that Sen. Bernie Sanders has or the $25.7 million that is in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign account.
The polls largely show that Biden continues to be in the lead, but the apparent limit for Biden to appeal to big donors and his failure to garner small-money donors “has served as a flashing warning sign about the potential limits of his appeal,” notes the Times.
Where are the donors going? Maybe with Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The host of a recent fundraiser for Buttigieg maintained that the crowd was filled with “a lot of those people you would have thought would be Biden people. And they weren’t.” Many of those who were there had an overwhelming feeling that “Biden has already lost,” according to the Bradley Tusk, who was manager of Michael Bloomberg’s reelection campaign for mayor of New York City.
Biden’s financial concern helps to explain why his campaign dropped its long-standing opposition to a super PAC. This will allow his donors to give unlimited money to support the former vice president. This move comes with a cost. Both Sanders and Warren have criticized the plan but Biden insiders say it’s a necessary because he “is taking incoming fire from both the White House and primary opponents on a daily basis, and needs to play both offense and defense.”
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