Former President Barack Obama had a blunt message for the 175,000 grassroots donors who logged on for his first virtual fundraiser with Joe Biden, raising a record-breaking $7.6 million.
“Man, this is serious business,” Obama told small-dollar contributors to Biden, his vice president from 2009-2017 and now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “Whatever it is that we’ve done so far to help Joe Biden get elected, we have to do more.”
There was “no disconnect between the urgency of this election and the political moment,” according to the former president of the movement against racial injustice and police brutality.
Obama said that urgency gave him hope, along with Biden’s credentials as a friend and “critical adviser” during his two terms as vice president.
Obama described the difference between President Trump, Biden’s Republican rival ahead of November’s general election, and former President George W. Bush was the 43rd commander in chief “still had a basic regard for the rule of law and the importance of our institutions.”
“What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is a White House, enabled by Republicans in Congress and a media structure that supports them, that has not just differed in terms of policy, but has gone at the very foundations of who we are and who we should be,” he said.
Obama added, “We can’t be complacent, or smug, or sense that somehow it’s so obvious that this president hasn’t done a good job because, look, he won once.”
Biden earlier told donors together they had raised “a remarkable $7.6 million,” $3 million more than his team announced Tuesday morning. That figure tops his previous record of $6 million for a single big-money event, a digital fundraiser last week with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon started the call laying out her strategy for the fall fight. In addition to Colorado, New Hampshire, and Virginia, she said the Biden camp saw “real opportunity” in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. She suggested Biden had expanded the Democratic electoral map to include Arizona, Georgia, and Texas.
But O’Malley Dillon pressed that the campaign wasn’t falling into the political trap of being overconfident.
“We know it’s going to get tightened,” she said of strong polling in Biden’s favor.
Looking ahead to November, O’Malley Dillon promised her staff wouldn’t resume traditional get-out-the-vote tactics until she was sure she wouldn’t put anyone “in harm’s way.” She dismissed the idea that door-knocking was “the gold standard,” saying instead it was creating community.
“We have to make sure that people know what’s at stake,” she said. “Our job is to make sure that we’re meeting people where they are.”
