Hillarysworld

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dem-donors-20101210,0,49525.story

If you've been following Ulsterman's "White House Insider" series, this is one of the Insider's predictions which is now coming true...

Democratic operatives are already laying plans to set up new independent expenditure committees that can raise unlimited funds, and hope to enroll early contributors to establish a beachhead for the coming campaign. But some stalwart party donors are vowing to withhold funds because of their anger over the tax-cut deal.

"I do not plan to support Obama and his reelection effort," said Utah-based hedge fund manager Art Lipson, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party and its allies in recent elections. He views the tax-cut compromise as a giveaway to Republicans that will increase the deficit.

Democratic officials said they were confident that both Obama and the party would have plenty of money in 2012, noting that the Democratic National Committee raised a record $195 million in this cycle despite anger in the liberal wing about the lack of a public option in healthcare reform and the slow pace of repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

But the breach between Obama and his liberal financial backers comes at a time when Democrats are frantically trying to play catch-up with the GOP in building robust independent expenditure operations. Early fundraising in 2011 would help Democrats lay the groundwork, particularly in countering a slew of issue ads conservative groups are expected to air in the coming months.

"I can see why they're going to have some of difficulty," said Dennis Mehiel, a longtime Democratic contributor who runs a corrugated-packaging company in New York.

Mehiel said he would consider backing a well-planned independent expenditure operation, but noted, "People that have the capacity to write those kinds of checks are used to getting a return when they spend money," and that they may be reluctant to contribute if they do not feel the administration is effective.

This month, many Democratic donors joined a campaign dubbed Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength that called on the president to allow the tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. They are now expressing frustration — and some even fury — at the compromise he struck with GOP congressional leaders to extend the cuts for two more years.

"I would not financially support his candidacy again," said Guy Saperstein, an environmental activist and former trial lawyer in Piedmont, Calif.

Saperstein was an early Obama supporter in 2008, but he said he had lost so much confidence in him that he would consider backing a viable primary challenger to run against the president. "I think what he's shown is incredible weakness, which I don't think many people would have predicted," he said.

It's unlikely a serious Democratic challenger will emerge. But the willingness of formerly fervent Obama backers to even raise that prospect speaks to the challenge fundraisers will face in some quarters.

Party activists who work closely with Democratic donors said that reaction to the tax-cut deal had been split. Some contributors view it as an irrevocable breach, while others are disappointed but sympathetic about the difficult political calculus Obama had to make. A third group has come to view the agreement as a net positive because Obama extracted concessions from the GOP on unemployment benefits and payroll taxes.