Liberal fat cats wimp out.

IN EARLY JUNE, a small group of Barack Obama's top fund-raisers gathered for an urgent meeting in a bar on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. They had been summoned to town for a briefing from campaign manager Jim Messina to the several dozen moneyed men and women who make up Obama's finance committee. But, in a classic example of Citizens United-era subterfuge, a handful of the attendees slipped away from the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel in the South Loop and headed to the bar. Over drinks, they met with Bill Burton and Paul Begala, leaders of the super PAC that is supporting Obama, Priorities USA Action, which is forbidden by law from coordinating with the campaign. Burton and Begala pleaded for help. “They said, ‘Don't you know some billionaires you can send us to?’" says one of the finance committee members. “I tried to think of a couple.”

With every passing week, Democratic insiders are becoming more and more panicked that, by November, their Republican opponents will have buried them under a mountain of money. After raising only $10.6 million through April, Priorities has picked up the pace somewhat, raising more than $9 million since. But the GOP money machine—that is, American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by Karl Rove; Americans for Prosperity, the group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—has vowed to spend $1 billion combined before Election Day. Meanwhile, the Mitt Romney–affiliated super PAC, Restore our Future, has reported more than $60 million so far, a tally that doesn’t even include a recent $10 million donation from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

One might think this juggernaut would jolt Democratic donors into opening their wallets. Instead, it has prompted an outbreak of soul-searching. “So, is this how far we’ve stooped? Is this what we’ve come to?” Burton recalls a wealthy Chicago supporter telling him when he came calling on behalf of Priorities. It turns out that the Democrats’ biggest problem this cycle isn’t financial, but existential.





THERE'S ONE VERY OBVIOUS reason that Democratic super PAC fund-raising is lagging, and it can be gleaned from a cursory glance at the Forbes 400. “We’re not as rich as they are. It’s that simple,” says John Morgan, a personal injury attorney from Florida whose firm gave Priorities $50,000 and whom I reached as he waited on the tarmac for a flight to the French Open. “We don’t have billionaires who are willing to spend ungodly sums of money,” adds the fund-raiser who met with Burton and Begala in Chicago. “All we can turn up are people who give $38,500”—the maximum donation allowed to the campaign and party committee combined—“and that’s to have dinner with Anna Wintour.”

Affluent liberals do exist, of course, but many of those who supported Obama in 2008 have been conspicuously absent this year. Some are miffed loyalists who felt slighted early in the administration, when, as one Democratic insider put it, “the White House was more of a ‘you’re with us or against us Rahm place’ rather than a ‘we’re all in this together’ Obama place.” There is speculation that this category includes Penny Pritzker, the billionaire Hyatt Hotels heiress who led Obama’s 2008 fund-raising effort but who has only given the maximum $5,000 to Obama’s campaign alone and nothing at all to Priorities.

Meanwhile, many of the Wall Street types who supported Obama last election have switched sides in a well-documented fit of pique. Democrats have been working hard to make inroads into Silicon Valley to make up for the shortfall. But so far, the political spending of tech tycoons has remained nanoscale, focused narrowly on industry issues rather than a broader engagement with electoral politics. And, although Democrats can still depend on Hollywood, most liberal Tinseltowners prefer see-and-be-seen fund-raising, like glitzy dinners with the president. (The exceptions have included the $2 million that Priorities received from Jeffrey Katzenberg and the $1 million from Bill Maher.)