Biden braces for a fundraising slowdown: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, we report on President Joe Biden taking a post-debate fundraising hit and why progressives are still backing him up. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd breaks down a fundamental miscalculation the Biden campaign made about the political landscape.

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‘It’s already disastrous’: Biden campaign fundraising takes a major hit

By Natasha Korecki, Jonathan Allen and Monica Alba

President Joe Biden’s campaign has already suffered a major slowdown in donations, and officials are bracing for a seismic fundraising hit, with the fallout from a debate nearly two weeks ago taking a sizable toll on operations, according to four sources close to the re-election effort.

“It’s already disastrous,” one of the sources close to Biden’s campaign said of fundraising.

“The money has absolutely shut off,” another source said.

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Two of the sources said this month is on a path to be down by possibly half — “or much more,” one of them said — from large donors alone. Sources emphasized that the donations were down across the board.

“Donors are negative. They had a call with the president. The call seemed so contrived to people, I don’t think they buy it,” one of the people close to the campaign said, referring to a recent national fundraising call between Biden and donors. “They called on people who were the most loyal, die-hard. … There were no tough questions for the president.”

Initially after the debate, the