Have you been called?

The press is reporting that president Obama has already spent $400 million on his re-election effort. This is total spending during 2011 and the first half of 2012. About 86 million dollars was spent for TV advertising and much of the rest went for things like internet advertising ($36 million), phones and telemarketing ($24 million), direct mail ($46 million) and legal fees ($3 million). That still leaves over one hundred million dollars spent on staff salaries, polling, offices and other "infrastructure" for the campaign. According to the Obamacrats, this expenditure will enable them to speak early and often to "persuadable voters". They can also focus on voter registration and get out the vote planning.

The end result of all this spending is that even though Obama had no primary opponent and is just coasting to his nomination, Obama now has less money on hand than Mitt Romney who had to spend enormous sums on his primary fights with the other GOP candidates. Some of this is the result of the successful Romney fund raising efforts (Romney has outraised Obama in each of the last two months.) More of the difference, however, is the result of the big spending ways of the Obama campaign. It seems that government is not the only place where the Obamacrats spend and spend and then spend some more.

This all got me to wondering. If all of this early spending is intended to get to "persuadable" voters early and often, just how many people have been contacted. I know that no one has called us. Okay, before you tell me that I am not a "persuadable" voter, you should know that there are four registered voters at my home. Two are my daughters who should be members of a prime Obama demographic. My wife is not only registered as a Democrat, she is active in their campaigns. Even she has not been contacted. Is that because we live in Connecticut, not exactly a swing state? I do not think so. In the last two months, we have been contacted by the various senatorial campaigns for the August Connecticut primary. I have been contacted at least ten times by the Romney campaign, the Republican Governors Association, the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, as well as the RNC. Those are phone calls. The email seems to be never ending. I usually get three or four a day from different GOP or like minded organizations. Indeed, the level of contact is much higher and much more frequent than it was in 2008.

And how successful has the registration drive been for Obama. The press reports about good results in Nevada, but we do not hear that in states like Florida and Pennsylvania which are much more significant than Nevada, the registration is moving towards a higher percentage of Republicans than has been the case in the last five years. It makes me wonder where all of Obama's campaign cash has gone. Did the campaign invest in "green energy campaigning"; is there a Solyndra for Obama committee getting paid somewhere? Did the campaign send cash to state committees so that they could pay health benefits for campaign employees with federal money? That did not work when Obama did it with the stimulus money and it won't work in this campaign. Maybe the Obama campaign gave the money to the GSA to use for million dollar "training" sessions in Vegas.

It is going to be very interesting this fall to see if all of the early spending by the Obamacrats paid off. Will they get a major boost from it? Or will the use of such a big chunk of their total resources lead to their inability to match expenditures by Romney and the GOP? If that happens, expect to hear over and over again in the press that Romney is "buying" the election. When Obama outspent McCain by two to one in 2008, the press said nothing. Were Romney to outspend Obama by five to four in 2012, we will be told that this is akin to the death of democracy. Get ready for it!