Jane Mayer takes a long look at the president's fundraising dilemma and finds that one of the biggest problems is continued discontent among big donors who feel their egos haven't been adequately stroked:
Big donors were particularly offended by Obama’s reluctance to pose with them for photographs at the first White House Christmas and Hanukkah parties. Obama agreed to pose with members of the White House press corps, but not with donors, because, a former adviser says, "he didn’t want to have to stand there for fourteen parties in a row." This decision continues to provoke disbelief from some Democratic fund-raisers. "It’s as easy as falling off a log!" one says. "They just want a picture of themselves with the President that they can hang on the bathroom wall, so that their friends can see it when they take a piss."
Obama's problem more generally:
It’s not easy for Obama to play the current money game, since he has repeatedly called it an unethical contest. He reserved some of the harshest words of his Presidency for the Citizens United ruling, saying that he couldn’t "think of anything more devastating to the public interest." Indeed, advocates of campaign-finance reform think that it’s perverse to fault Obama for being insufficiently solicitous of billionaires. Meredith McGehee, the policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, says, "The whole question of whether the President’s donors are happy just boils down to how corrupting this whole system is. That the President, with all the other things on his plate, has to worry about keeping high rollers happy is just sad."
The Dish 