Inflation dampens Biden campaign's fundraising gloating, just as it threatens Biden's re-election hopes

President Joe Biden's campaign is boasting about its latest fundraising haul, but inflation put a damper on the significance of its total.

The campaign said on Monday that it raised $97 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, ending the year with a whopping $117 million cash on hand. The latter figure, according to the campaign, is "the highest total amassed by any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle."

Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:

This historic haul — proudly powered by strong and growing grassroots enthusiasm — sends a clear message: The Team Biden-Harris coalition knows the stakes of this election and is ready to win this November.

Biden campaign finance chairman Rufus Gifford, moreover, claimed the Biden campaign had accomplished a feat that not even Barack Obama's successful campaigns could manage.

"I remember when [Obama campaign manager Jim Messina] told me to shoot for $100 million in Q4 of 2011," Gifford said on social media. "Even the much-praised Obama fundraising machine couldn’t get even close and we scratched and clawed our way to $68 million as I was refreshing our totals on New Year’s Eve."

But is that true? Could the Obama campaign not "even get close" to these numbers the Biden campaign hauled in?

Considering that inflation has plagued the economy, decreased the spending power of the dollar, and subsequently hurt Biden's re-election chances, inflation also put a damper on Gifford's gloating.

When inflation is calculated, the Obama campaign's $68 million is equivalent to $92.4 million today — much closer than Gifford would have you believe. The Obama campaign also ended 2011 with $81.77 million in cash on hand, which today is the equivalent of $111.1 million. Thus Biden's fourth-quarter fundraising, while impressive, is not exactly the Earth-shattering haul the campaign claims.

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign said that 97% of all donations came from people donating less than $200, a figure which would typically be a good proxy for grassroots support. Polls, however, continue to show that it may mean nothing as Trump has led Biden since last fall.

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