Obama Is Privately Telling Democratic Donors Time Is Running Out for Sanders


President Barack Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors in Austin last week that Bernie Sanders’ bid for the White House was all but done, and that it was time to unite behind Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

The remarks, which were confirmed by the White House, even included a defense of Clinton’s character and addressed criticism that she isn’t authentic, particularly when compared with the Vermont senator. From the Times:

But he played down the importance of authenticity, noting that President George W. Bush—whose record he ran aggressively against in 2008—was once praised for his authenticity.

Obama’s quiet exhortations came just days before Sanders’ disappointing performance in the March 15 primaries. They also preview how the president may be preparing to play an active role in the 2016 election.

Obama and his advisers have reportedly been strategizing for weeks about how to ensure a Democrat defeats Donald Trump, should the real estate magnate secure the Republican nomination. According to the Washington Post, they’ve been specifically returning to the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns for potential tactics.

When asked in January if Sanders’ campaign reminded him of his own 2008 bid, Obama quickly rejected the comparison.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said in an interview with Politico, a response many perceived as a subtle jab at Sanders. His most recent discussion with donors reveals, however, that the president may be ready to abandon such restraint.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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