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Opinion: Forget the Brooklyn Bridge; Obama has a very special piece of campaign to sell you

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Looking for a risky investment, even in these awful economic times with gasoline costing twice what it did when Barack Obama first put his feet up on the Oval Office desk?

Well, does this over-promising Democrat have a deal for you.

In case you hadn’t noticed, because there are only 557 days left until 2012 presidential voting ends and still no viable Republican opponent, the former state senatorhas turned up the heat in his perhaps billion-dollar 2012 reelection bid.

Yes, yes, he raked in $17 million the other night in Chicago. And did three more funders Wednesday night for Manhattan’s rich, eager-to-please East Siders (When’s the last time you forked over $35G’s for dinner?). (See details and remarks here.)

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But here’s the deal behind this deal:

Obama wants to scare the Ben Franklins out of everybody with some....

...overpowering fundraising numbers for this current quarter, come July. He may be zeroing in on Jimmy Carter approval levels, but Obama would like to harvest a few hundred million dollars before July 1. Or maybe he needs to reap the dough before the polls show even more buyers’ remorse from 2008. So, the president of the United States who was born in Honolulu and has now complied with Donald Trump’s demand to reveal his birth certificate, just sent out millions of emails to supporters. Or at least they went to past supporters, whose ranks are rapidly thinning if those polls are to be believed, which no pol does when they’re this bad.

The email, titled ‘Big things’ and signed ‘Barack’ because, after all, he’s just a good friend, follows this logic:

He’s set out to do unspecified things that nobody else has tried before for unspecified reasons. But he hasn’t got so much done. And he knows that many people are impatient and unhappy with all that. And that’s OK because he too is impatient for unspecified change.

‘We knew this wouldn’t be easy,’ Obama states without specifying what wouldn’t be easy. ‘The kind of change we’re working for never comes easily.’

There is, as you might imagine, still so much to do between golf rounds and foreign trips. that Obama can already tell he needs more time -- and, you guessed it, more money.

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‘We’re building this campaign now,’ Obama says. ‘And you have to take ownership of it.’

Not much choice there.

As the come-on, the party leader asks if you could just hand over a measly $5 to get things started. However, click the link and there is no donation box for $5. The minimum is $10 and goes up past $1,000 to ‘Other.’ (Warning: Donating guarantees even more such money missives in coming weeks and months.)

There’s a little video of Obama once again addressing the strong strain of impatience over bounteous unkept promises, which his private voter polling has uncovered as a real weakness this time. And a tiny campaign plea to ‘own a piece of it.’

There is one other odd little thing of note in this early Obama appeal for more money, something the email actually does not say. Look closely. Not a single one of the 286 words in your good friend’s electronic message is ‘please.’

That is, after all, the Chicago way -- and Obama’s.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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