2024 Election Update: Latest Biden and Trump Campaign News

But hours later, Biden joined a private call with major donors and fundraisers to reassure them. “This is important,” he told them of their support.

The seemingly contradictory messages underscore the dilemma facing the president as he grapples with the fallout from his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump last month. To keep his presidential campaign going, Mr. Biden will likely need the support of wealthy Democratic supporters, but they have been among the loudest voices calling for him to end his re-election bid.

In his attempt to defuse the opposition, Biden — a politician who has long relied on the party establishment to fund his campaign — has embraced a surprisingly populist, anti-elite message that in some ways mirrors Trump’s.

Major donors warn that the party will lose the White House and the primary with Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket. A growing group of donors have pushed — at first quietly, then publicly — to step aside to allow for an alternative candidate and have threatened to withhold their money unless that happens.

While Mr. Biden’s campaign has continued to court wealthy Democrats, including working to schedule fundraising receptions despite uncertain interest, the president has also publicly portrayed the backlash from big donors as a sign that he is standing up for ordinary people against moneyed interests. But polls show that many rank-and-file Democratic voters also have deep concerns about his age.

In a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday morning, Obama wrote: “The voters — and only the voters — decide the Democratic Party’s nominee. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any select group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, Biden said, “I’m very frustrated with the elites,” singling out major donors. “I want their support, but that’s not why I’m running.”

The bold message comes amid a new financial reality for his campaign.

If Mr. Biden moves forward, he will likely need to rely on small donors to make up for the decline of big donors as the race enters a phase of heavy spending on advertising and voter mobilization.

If he can tap into the anti-elite sentiment among the party’s small donor base to weather the post-debate turmoil, it will put him in the company of more populist politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia. Those lawmakers have generated waves of money from small donors through Calling for perceived abuse By the institution.

“We know that high-visibility, high-intensity moments can lead to an immediate influx of small donations and that anger, resentment, and outrage are powerful motivators in politics, including for small donors,” says Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University who has studied the role of small donors in politics. fueling political polarization“It is also possible that we will see a conflict between the Democratic Party base, which wants Biden to stay, and the ‘elite’ faction of mega-donors, who want an alternative,” he said in an email.

Small donors have long been prized in politics as a sign of grassroots enthusiasm, as well as a sustainable source of cash, since they can give repeatedly without reaching donation limits. Advances in online fundraising apps, email, and mobile phones have allowed campaigns to use major events as opportunities to solicit donations from moderate-income supporters.

“Small donors tend to give from the heart,” said Eitan D. Hirsch, a professor of political science at Tufts University who has worked in microfinance. Study the motivations of political donors“Larger donors give more from their heads than their hearts,” he said, predicting that Biden’s campaign would see “a decline in big donors and a relative increase in small donors.”

“He has a lot of supporters who may not be multi-million dollar donors or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they care, they’re going to vote, and now they’re showing that they support our president by giving a few dollars — $5, $25, whatever amount they give — to make a statement that they think this president should stay in the race,” said Carol L. Hamilton, a Los Angeles attorney and member of Biden’s national finance committee.

Ms. Hamilton participated in the donor call with the president on Monday and said “the people I spoke to were very reassured about him on that call.” She questioned how many major donors had abandoned Mr. Biden. “We haven’t seen a mass exodus at all,” she said. “I mean, there have been a few people, yeah, that’s true.”

In the hours after the call, the Biden campaign said it received a maximum $929,600 donation to its joint fund with Democratic Party committees from former retail executive Peter Lowey. The campaign also sent out a fundraising email asking for $25 donations, which it described as “the most common donation amount for emails like this.”

“We know $25 doesn’t seem like a lot in the face of Trump’s millions, but we promise that your $25 — along with the support of the thousands of people who are contributing now — will make a huge difference,” the letter read.

“Our grassroots donors have shown up in full force, setting records time and time again over the past two weeks, and across our entire donor base, we will continue to raise the money needed to dominate Donald Trump on the ground and on the airwaves to win in November,” Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said in a statement Tuesday.

Mr. Biden has raised more money from small donors than Mr. Trump so far this cycle, According to the analysis Through the nonpartisan monitoring site OpenSecrets. This represents a step back from the confrontation between them in 2020.

In 2016, when the Republican establishment largely aligned itself against Mr. Trump, He praised his efforts in raising small funds. While he criticized major donors. Even then, he remained silent. He courted these same wealthy activists..

Within 24 hours of his May conviction on 34 felony charges, Trump’s campaign galvanized its small donor base, raising nearly $53 million and smashing online records for Republicans. The donations helped him close the fundraising gap and pull ahead of Biden, who had maintained a financial advantage throughout most of the campaign.

Thanks to the huge increase in his wealth after his conviction, Trump and his party began June with $235 million in the bank, while Biden and his party had $212 million.

In June, thanks to post-debate fundraising, the president was able to raise more money than Trump, but he entered this month with less cash on hand: $285 million for Trump’s operation versus $240 million for Biden.

According to the campaign, small donors provided nearly 80 percent of the $38 million the Biden campaign raised in the four days after the debate, including two of the best grassroots fundraising days of the 2024 cycle. The campaign said its best fundraising month was June, when it raised $127 million, nearly two-thirds of which came from grassroots donors.

Campaign finance reports detailing fundraising will not be made public until later this month.

An analysis by OpenSecrets of campaign finance filings from earlier in the race shows that Mr. Biden raised a much smaller percentage of the money — About 43 percent – Small donors, who are generally considered to be those who give $200 or less.

On “Morning Joe,” Biden claimed that “97 percent of all the people who have donated to us are people who make less than $200—donated less than $200.” He called it “the largest number ever in history. I’m not sure about that, but I think it’s true.” (This claim is difficult to independently verify, because campaigns are not required to disclose individual donors who give $200 or less.)

John Morgan, a Florida attorney who said he has raised more than $1 million for Biden’s campaign, said in a text message that he did not believe an increase in small donations would make up for the defection of major donors.

But Mr. Morgan, who had planned a summer fundraising campaign for Mr. Biden that is now in flux, predicted that major donors would return to the president’s camp if he stayed in the race.

“If that doesn’t happen, Trump will win,” he wrote.

Rachel Shorey Contribute to the preparation of reports.