Following Donald Trump’s landslide win in the Iowa caucuses last week, President Joe Biden declared his former opponent the “clear” frontrunner for the GOP nomination, Axios reported.
In a fundraising appeal after the caucus, the president said that the 2024 election “was always going to be you and me vs. extreme MAGA conservatives.” Biden urged his supporters to “chip in now” to stop Trump and his MAGA movement.
While polling between Biden and Trump remains within the margin of error, with Real Clear Politics Polling Average giving Trump a slim 2.9 percent lead over the president, the Biden campaign and the DNC are hoping that focusing on “extreme MAGA” could be the key to generating voter enthusiasm for the widely unpopular president, not to mention campaign cash.
The DNC and the Biden campaign announced last Monday that they hauled in over $97 million in the final quarter of 2023, boosted in large part by a series of star-studded fundraisers in December, the Associated Press reported.
After Biden officially launched his reelection bid in April 2023, his campaign raised $235 million to finish the year with $117 million cash on hand, the highest campaign haul of any Democrat presidential candidate at the same point in the election cycle.
Biden has made “defending democracy” a central part of his reelection campaign and has often warned that Donald Trump’s MAGA movement would pose a threat to the country.
Since last April, nearly a million people have donated to Biden’s reelection campaign. Of the donations received in the final quarter of 2023, 97 percent came from donors who contributed less than $200. The average donation amount was $41.88, according to the campaign.
The president has held 110 fundraisers since he launched his reelection bid in April, 39 of which occurred during the final three months of last year, including three big donor events featuring singer James Taylor, film producer Steven Spielberg, and singer-actress Barbra Streisand.
