Before the New Year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) sent out a fundraising email begging its recipients to help her meet her reduced fundraising goal of $20 million for the fourth quarter of 2019.
As I noted at the time, the Warren campaign “lowered the bar from trying to beat or even match her campaign’s fundraising last quarter, at $24.6 million, to struggling to crack $20 million this quarter.”
Following the release of fourth quarter fundraising totals by many of her competitors in the Democrat presidential primary, Warren’s campaign announced that she had exceeded this reduced goal and raked in $21 million.
In their article entitled “Warren Fundraising Drops, Lagging Behind Other Top Candidates,” NPR reports:
As other candidates report significant increases in fundraising, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised $21.2 million in the final three months of 2019, according to her presidential campaign, a drop from the $24.7 million she raised in the previous fundraising period.The figure is also less than the totals that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg took in between September and December.. . . . The slight decline mirrors Warren’s poll numbers in the final months of 2019: After surging for much of the summer and early fall, her campaign ran into some turbulence amid pressure to release a health care plan and the rollout of a policy that would create a single-payer system in stages, and not fully implement it until the third year of her administration.
CBS News has compiled a handy list of the fourth quarter hauls of the 2020 candidates:
Democrats
- Bernie Sanders: $34.5 million
- Pete Buttigieg: $24.7 million
- Joe Biden: $22.7 million
- Elizabeth Warren: $21.2 million
- Andrew Yang: $16.5 million
- Amy Klobuchar: $11.4 million
- Cory Booker: $6.6 million
- Tulsi Gabbard: $3.4 million
Republicans
- Donald Trump: $46 million
Despite the disappointing haul, Warren’s campaign sent out a triumphal email (no link because it’s an email):
Well today, I’m excited to share some great news with you. Thanks to supporters like you who stepped up and chipped in, we beat our goal and raised more than $21.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. And we saw a strong surge of support at the end — over $1.5 million came in on the last day of the year alone, our best fundraising day to date.Team Warren is ready to dream big, fight hard, and win. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And again the Warren campaign makes the questionable suggestion that she doesn’t solicit big dollar donations, despite the fact that her campaign hosts such fundraisers and sends a cardboard cutout of Warren—along with her surrogates—in her place.
Elizabeth didn’t host any private events to raise money from wealthy donors behind closed doors. She didn’t take any money from Washington lobbyists or PACs.And we still hit our goal. That’s because grassroots donors are building a grassroots movement to change the way campaigns are funded. And that’s a big part of how we’ll change who government works for.
As I’ve noted previously, this is technically correct in that her cardboard cutout is not “hosting” the event, but her campaign sure is.
While still in the top tier, Warren is still struggling to regain the traction she lost with her disastrous Medicare for All plan rollout, including its subsequent revisions.
Part of her attempt to regain ground was another unmitigated disaster for her. Getting slapped down by former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg over her “wine cave” offensive was humiliating. And it was all the more so because it shone a spotlight on her hypocrisy and dishonesty problem.
Instead of a poll-boosting debate attack on Biden that (briefly) helped Sen. Kamala Harris or the arguably campaign-ending one that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard launched against Harris, Warren’s attempt failed miserably because she forgot that old adage about people in glass houses.
Of course Politico writes it as if Warren is simply “returning to her stay-above-the-fray approach.”
Wine caves are out. Universal child care, student loan debt, and political corruption are in.After Elizabeth Warren’s bumpy ride as a front-runner this past fall — her fundraising has slipped and she’s stalled in national and state polls — the Massachusetts senator is done with the attacks against former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and reverting to the approach that helped power her initial rise in the polls.When asked here Thursday about Buttigieg’s $24.7 million fundraising haul, Warren would only say, “I didn’t spend one single minute selling access to my time to millionaires and billionaires.” Then she pivoted to her gratitude for her own donors.
Of course that’s all she would say; it’s not nobility, it’s the acute knowledge that she hasn’t a leg to stand on. It’s also interesting that Warren, herself a multi-millionaire, is still railing against “millionaires and billionaires.” Even Bernie dropped the “millionaires” part when he became one himself.
It remains to be seen if Warren can regain her status at the very top of the Democrat primary clown car roster because many Democrat primary voters still seem to be shopping for the candidate they can get—and stay—behind.
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