First, let me give you the big #: $86 million. You have to wait until minute 3:30 to hear this though. Now, this money is split up between OFA ($47 million) and and the DNC ($38 million). I explain what the organiztion is like after the fold where I will also give you the most important numbers, but I just want to say something before I do.
As part of President Obama's promise (linked to his promise in 2008) to make his supporters feel that his campaign also belonged to them, Campaign Manager Jim Messina released Obama's 2011 second quarter FEC filing first to his donors and not the FEC. This is the first time in my decade of following national politics that I have ever heard of a candidate releasing his numbers to his supporters before the FEC.
We can get into how isolated we activists feel from the policy-making and messaging of President Obama and the White House. Or we could get into how destructive money is in politics. And I would wholeheartedly agree with both points and scream until I am blue in the face that "MONEY IS NOT SPEECH!"
Yet we live in the real world and while we on the left have known for generations that money is not the only force in politics it does play a big role. And I know that presidents are compromised. The question is can you live with the compromises and so far I can because I have lived thorugh 8 years of far far worse.
So here are the numbers: