For the first time since his official entry into the campaign, Joe Biden left on Wednesday to raise funds for a presidential battle which could once again break all financial records.
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The American president, after a speech with an economic and social content in the north of New York, must participate in Manhattan in two receptions with wealthy donors.
According to the CNBC chain, one is organized by a former executive of the investment company Blackstone, Tony James, recently chosen to sit on a supervisory committee at the White House. The entry ticket for this event is fixed, according to CNBC, at 25,000 dollars per person.
The other reception is hosted by a businessman, George Logothetis.
Outside the United States, these meetings, in luxurious apartments or opulent villas, mixing worldliness, politics and big money, challenge, especially when a head of state in office takes part in them.
In America, money is not only the nerve of the electoral war, it is also considered as a barometer of the dynamics from which this or that candidate benefits, or not.
Campaign advisers to Joe Biden have told the Washington Post that they hope to raise a total of more than $2 billion, through various channels, to hopefully carry Joe Biden, 80, to a second term.
In the camp of his most serious opponent, Donald Trump, it is assured that the recent and spectacular indictment of the Republican billionaire has caused financial contributions to jump.
In a country where campaigns are already brewing astronomical sums, the NGO Open Secrets, which specializes in political financing, estimates that the presidential race of 2024 could be the most expensive in American history.
For that of 2020, the expenses, all candidates and organizations combined, had reached 5.7 billion dollars, more than double the amount spent for the previous presidential election, calculated the NGO.
The contributions do not come only from billionaires or multinationals: still according to Open Secrets, for his 2020 campaign, Joe Biden had received some 400 million dollars in small contributions, less than 200 dollars each.
The American media assure that the Democrat should once again be able to count on big names in the economy and in tech. But what about these smaller donations this time around?
The latest polls are not good for Joe Biden, handicapped by his age and the high cost of living.
A recent opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post and the ABC chain ensures that 68% of Americans consider him too old for a second term. Only 44% think the same of 76-year-old Donald Trump.
And the president’s confidence rating, according to that same poll, hit a new low point, at 36% – worse, at the same stage of their presidencies, than Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, three presidents who failed to get re-elected.
Joe Biden therefore cannot afford to be left behind financially by his predecessor, who launched his campaign last November.
The Republican former president said he raised some $18 million between Nov. 15, 2022 and March 31, 2023, according to publicly available figures.
But his campaign says he raised almost as much – more than $15 million, Politico says – in the two weeks after he was charged in New York on March 31 in a case of falsification of accounting documents.
As for the Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, who could soon join the campaign, he would be, according to American media, at the head of a war chest of more than 100 million dollars.
However, electoral law in the United States is so structured that it is difficult to know exactly how many millions a particular candidate has.
The regulation is more or less restrictive depending on whether the donations go to the candidates, to their “PACs” or to their “Super PACs”.
These “political action committees” are sorts of investment funds that play an essential, if sometimes underground, role in the campaigns.