President Obama has set a goal of collecting $60 million for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee for the fundraising quarter that ends in six days, a campaign source said today.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asks, “Anyone smell ‘expectations game’ being played by Team Obama with $60 million 2ndQ fundraising ‘goal’? They need to average more than $100 million over seven quarters to match 2008.”
Last year, Obama raised $745 million. He’s talking about raising a billion this year – an increase of 34.2 percent.
Since 2008, the U.S. economy, as measured by real Gross Domestic Product, has grown 2.6 percent in 2009 and 2.9 percent in 2010. The Obama administration projects 3.1 percent growth in 2011 and 4.1 percent growth in 2012.
Even under Obama’s probably-too-optimistic projections, the U.S. real GDP will have grown from $12.88 trillion in 2009 (it was $13.11 trillion in 2008) to $13.99 trillion in 2012, or roughly 8.6 percent. (Using 2008 as a baseline, real GDP growth will have grown 6.7 percent.)
In other words, Obama’s campaign warchest is projected to grow at roughly four times the growth rate of U.S. real GDP.
Of course, as we all know from the unemployment chart, projections surrounding the Obama administration tend to be less than completely reliable.