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As President Obama moves ever forward with his historic presidency, he has taken some of his precious time to honor me by expressing his need for my help.

I just need a little more.

I am very proud to have been among the selected few to receive this personal e-mail from my friend Barack:

Friend –

I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.

I’m not just talking about the super PACs and anonymous outside groups — I’m talking about the Romney campaign itself. Those outside groups just add even more to the underlying problem.

The Romney campaign raises more than we do, and the math isn’t hard to understand: Through the primaries, we raised almost three-quarters of our money from donors giving less than $1,000, while Mitt Romney’s campaign raised more than three-quarters of its money from individuals giving $1,000 or more.

And, again, that’s not including the massive outside spending by super PACs and front groups funneling up to an additional billion dollars into ads trashing me, you, and everything we believe in.

We can be outspent and still win — but we can’t be outspent 10 to 1 and still win.

More than 2.2 million Americans have already chipped in for us, and I’m so grateful for it. As we face this week’s fundraising deadline, can you make a donation of $3 or more today?

Every donation you make today automatically enters you to join Michelle and me for one of the last grassroots dinners of this campaign — today is your last chance to get your name in.

These dinners represent how we do things differently. My opponent spent this past weekend at a secretive retreat for the biggest donors to both his campaign and the super PACs that support him.

I’ve got other responsibilities I’m attending to.

Donate today to stand for our kind of politics:

https://donate.barackobama.com/June-Deadline

Thank you,

Barack (Emphasis added.)

President Obama does indeed have “other responsibilities” to which he must attend and will soon have more; they are critical to the future of our country. For example, following the Supreme Court’s obstructionist decision on Monday upholding a major part of the Arizona immigration laws, he acted promptly to minimize its effects by directing his Department of Homeland Security to terminate cooperation agreements with Arizona and, essentially, to decline immigration status calls from Arizona law enforcement authorities. He will tolerate obstructionism from neither the Supreme Court nor the Congress. Following the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday, expected to do great damage to our immensely popular ObamaCare (and even to President Obama’s historic presidency), he will have to decide what to do by executive order or otherwise to thwart the Court’s obstructionism yet again. And all of that comes right on the heels of exhausting himself by enacting creating his very own Nightmare Dream Act less than two weeks ago to defeat an obstructionist Congress.

President Obama must have at least another four years in office. To accomplish that, he needs all of the good little people — even sweet little Julia and her impoverished friends — to chip in so that he can spend less of his important time fast and furiously wheedling contributions out of the rich and famous. True, as he put it, they are “the tie-breaker,” “the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.” However, they might not give until it really hurts.

Render unto Obama what is Obama’s.

Give! Give till it hurts! (Please do not send food stamps in lieu of money.) It’s the least we the little people can do; and we might even win a free all expense paid dinner with President Obama and his lovely lady. That would be cheap at any price!

UPDATE:

I just received this sad e-mail from my friend Michelle:

Friend –

I’m sad to say this is probably the last dinner with supporters that Barack and I will be able to host together before the election.

Today’s the last day you can chip in to be automatically entered for the chance to join us — and I hope you will. You can donate all the way up to midnight tonight, when the campaign will randomly select the winners:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Meet-Us-for-Dinner

Thanks for everything you’re doing. Every little bit makes a difference.

Hope to see you at dinner,

Michelle

Dear me! Can’t someone at least send some food stamps?

First published at Dan Miller’s Blog.

by Dan Backer / May 21 2012

The reigning narrative is of Super PACs dominating the 2012 elections. But elections are finite moments in time, before and after which the ongoing battle to shape policy continues. The story we may not hear until 2013 is the quiet emergence of Hybrid PACs as a tool of political operators who understand the difference between winning elections and winning policy.

Policy professionals know successful advocacy as a “3-legged stool” that requires three elements: (1) professional advocacy, (2) grassroots and grasstops advocacy, and (3) PAC money.

Professional advocacy is delivered by organizational staff, in-house advocates, or contract lobbyists who shape the overall strategy for a program and the messaging that accompanies it. Those professionals deliver that message to key Members of Congress and staff, and engage the media, coalitions, and manage other efforts.

Grassroots advocacy enhances the message by putting a human face on it—often the face of a constituent or representative member of the affected community. Grassroots’ corollary, known as “grasstops,” uses a representative’s most prominent constituents, or those with direct personal contact, to leverage either their prestige or a relationship with a member to enhance the delivery of the message.

PAC funding creates receptive audiences for the message that can then be delivered to the right people at the right time and, for sophisticated PACs, on an ongoing basis.

All three legs are essential to an effective lobbying strategy that achieves results. Bumping headlong into that dynamic of effective advocacy is the dichotomy of PACs.

Many practitioners still think of PACs in terms of “Connected PACs”—those affiliated and controlled by corporate, union, or association sponsors—and “Non-connected PACs,” essentially grassroots organizations. Thanks to recent cases, most notably SpeechNow.org v. FEC, non-connected PACs now includes Super PACs, which have the ability to raise unlimited funds from anyone, and tend to raise them largely from a few core benefactors.

There is, however, a more practical division, often lost on lawyers, between policy-oriented PACs and electorally-oriented PACs

Policy-oriented PACs tend to focus not on elections but on specific and often very narrow policy objectives. Regardless of who wins what election, they will spend their resources year round in D.C. to provide their grassroots, grasstops, and professional advocates with a steady stream of opportunities to effectively convey their message to whoever happens to be the key Members of Congress. In that way, policy oriented PACs—largely the Connected PACs of corporations and associations—are an integral part of that three-legged stool utilized by sophisticated advocates.

Electorally-oriented PACs are mainly Non-connected (and smaller) grassroots PACs and Connected Union PACs. They tend to be more interested in a broader ideology than any single issue, and are most active largely in the run-up to elections. While some are sophisticated D.C. operators, they are generally less active during the legislative season when it comes to promoting specific policy initiatives rather than general policy goals, and except for the larger Union organizations, tend to have a much smaller, impermanent presence in Washington to build those long term relationships. Many electoral PACs are not effectively used as part of the three-legged advocacy stool, but now can be.

Super PACs are the latest twist on electorally-oriented PACs, bringing vast new resources to bear by many new players to win elections today. And they do so by moving voters—the grassroots—to act on Election Day. But then what?

On November 7, savvy operators with plenty of money kicking about will need to justify payroll, and big-dollar donors aren’t likely to just abandon what they’ve built. The natural post-election progression of the Super PAC will be from an electoral focus to advancing specific policy goals. This will lead to significant growth in what is called the “Hybrid PAC”—a product of Carey v. FEC, which holds that a PAC can have both an account to accept candidate-contributable dollars and an account to accept unlimited dollars to make independent expenditures and offset operating costs.

Hybrid PACs offer the best of both worlds: Hard dollars to advance specific policy initiatives the way “traditional”, pre-Carey PACs have long done, and soft dollars to underwrite operations, hire advocacy-oriented staff, and support grassroots and grasstops advocacy—the other legs of the three-legged stool. The electorally-oriented Super PAC players of 2012 can easily become the policy-oriented Hybrid PAC players of 2013, marrying the ability to impact local constituents with the resources and advocacy to impact policy.

Hybrid PACs are the next rung on the evolutionary ladder of advocacy; they aren’t just a legal creation but a practical, operational tool. Sophisticated political operators will see and seize the opportunity.

Dan Backer is principal attorney at DB Capitol Strategies, which provides legal, strategic, and operational guidance to political organizations with a focus on PAC treasury and FEC reporting and compliance.

http://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/320177/why-hybrid-pacs-matter.thtml

Comedian Stephen Colbert, organizer of Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, has inspired some college activists to start super PACs of their own. But watchdogs and campaign finance reform advocates want to use the groups as a way to effect change. (Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo )

Source: RollCall.com

By: Eliza Newlin Carney

Posted: May 8th, 2012

Want to get big money out of politics? Set up a super PAC.

That seemingly incongruous formula has been seized on by a growing number of watchdog groups, self-styled reformers and student activists who have set up more than a dozen super PACs aimed at putting a stop to unrestricted campaign spending.

With names such as America’s Super PAC for the Permanent Elimination of America’s Super PACs, Citizens Against Super PACs and No Dirty Money Elections, these protest political action committees are sober-minded, satirical or sometimes both.

Take CREEP, a super PAC set up by Georgetown University graduate student Robert Lucas. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference the Nixon-era Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which organized the Watergate break-ins 40 years ago.

Read More: RollCall.com