286 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographysnobbish, arrogant, and boring. But it was Barack’s response to questions from Hillary’s
supporters that produced sour bile.- What about the Vice President slot? The questioner told Barack that if he named Hillary as
the Vice President that the Democrats would be in a position to own the White House for the
next 16 years. Barack said nothing to give Clinton supporters hope that he would consider the
Senator from New York. - Will you help Hillary retire her debt? On this one Barack said he had written a check for
$2300 (According to the AP, Michelle gave a check as well. A good first step.) but that his real
interest was getting access to the phone lists of Hillary’s donors and contacts. Hillary supporters
at the gathering sat on their hands, their checkbooks, and their lists. - What will you do to stop the sexist smear of Hillary? The questioner noted that Barack did
nothing to quell the rampant sexist attacks on Hillary during the campaign and that she
continues to be brutalized. Barack said, “Yes, I know. But there is another woman who has been
brutalized as well. The healing will take a long time to fix.” So there you have it. No vision. No
magnanimous gesture. It is still all about Barack and Michelle. Most of the Hillary supporters
left unassuaged. Instead of a promise from Barack to tell his supporters to stop the attacks on
Hillary and her supporters, he essentially put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his
shoulders.’ (Larry Johnson, “Breaking News: Obama Bombs,” June 26, 2008)^136
As the primary season progressed, Obama would show himself a weaker and weaker candidate,
and more and more anemic as a vote-getter. The same thing occurred with Obama’s fundraising,
which has relentlessly declined from the peak hysteria among the lemming legions which was
registered in February, 2008. In that month, Obama had raked in $55 million, an all-time record for
any US presidential campaign in a single calendar month. But in March, as the Reverend Wright
scandal began to hit, this had gone down to $40 million. In April, as Obama’s blue-collar problems
multiplied and the Bill Ayers-Bernardine Dohrn scandal surfaced, Obama declined further to $31
million. In May, as Obama was being widely pronounced as a new George McGovern, the creaking
money machine was only capable of bringing in $22 million — only a half a million or so more
than McCain, who was supposed to be notoriously weak in this department.
All in all, it was estimated that Obama’s fundraising take in the second quarter of 2008 had come
in 70% lower than he had targeted. There were reports that Obama was running out of money that
he could spend before the beginning of the fall campaign around September 1. His burn rate must
have been staggering. In the meantime, even the notoriously pro-Obama Newsweek poll plummeted
from a lead of 15 points for the Perfect Master down to an advantage of a measly three, with the
Gallup tracking poll showing a statistical dead heat with Obama ahead by two.
States like Ohio and Pennsylvania had seen Obama outspend Senator Clinton by margins that
were variously estimated at three to one, four to one, and five to one. By July, McCain was ahead
of Barky in a Gallup-USA poll. During the primaries, Obama had spent about $285 million just to
eke out an outright loss in the popular vote to Senator Clinton. His handlers had boasted at the time
he dropped out of public financing in June 2008 that he could raise ‘hundreds of millions of dollars
over the next few months,” including $100 million in June alone.^137
In reality, it was little more than half that. Obama’s hard right turn and multiple flip-flops on
issues from the Iraq war to FISA wiretapping to NAFTA to the death penalty to gun control and the
looming privatization of Social Security had begun to disillusion even some of his most fanatical
lemming legions.