Politics
Election 2012: President Obama re-election in doubt?
“This can’t wait until September,” said Steve Rosenthal, president of the Organizing Group, a Democratic-leaning consulting firm.
Rosenthal issued his own warning on Obama’s re-election prospects in an online column headlined “President Obama Can Lose: Now is the Time for Democratic Donors to Step Up in a Big Way.”
In an interview Wednesday, Rosenthal said Obama’s populist State of the Union address and Romney’s initial troubles securing the Republican nomination created a false sense of euphoria among Democrats. But he said that sentiment ignored the fact that the country is still evenly divided, that the president does not hold a lead in all battleground states and that Obama this time does not have the 2-1 edge in money that he had over John McCain in 2008.
“They have such a huge financial advantage and with the economy teetering, it’s frightening,” Rosenthal said of Republicans. “I hate to say it comes down to money, but it does.”
Don Peebles, a New York-based real estate developer and Obama fundraiser, said that while Democratic complacency has been hard to shake this cycle, he expects more urgency this summer.
“There’s definitely a sense among the financial supporters of the president that we need to get more engaged and redouble our efforts to make sure that he has the resources he needs,” Peebles said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
