DNC Hosts Fundraiser for Wall Street Fat Cats at the White House

The Democratic National Committee and President Obama are trying to woo back Wall Street’s “fat cats” because they need their campaign cash. So they held a fundraiser at the White House.

A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House’s Blue Room.

The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

Mr. Obama, who enraged many financial industry executives a year and a half ago by labeling them “fat cats” and criticizing their bonuses, followed up the meeting with phone calls to those who could not attend.

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash — in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

ZIP wonders if this is legal, so do I. It certainly sounds inappropriate.

And for all of you who believe the Republicans are the party of the big banks:

Executives at large investment banks, a group that gave generously to Mr. Obama in his last campaign, are remaining on the sidelines for now. Only a small handful of such donors have appeared in Mr. Obama’s joint campaign filings with the Democratic National Committee, though officials there said more would appear in the coming weeks.

Some traditional heavy hitters in Democratic Wall Street fund-raising have stepped out of the game. They include Maureen White and her husband, Steven L. Rattner, a founder of the Quadrangle Group, whose Fifth Avenue living room was a critical conduit between Wall Street and Democratic candidates in the years before Mr. Rattner joined the Obama administration to help restructure the auto industry. The couple did not resume their old role after Mr. Rattner left government, and he was caught up last year in an investigation into kickbacks to New York’s state pension fund.

More on that little scandal here. More on Obama bashing the “fat cats” who helped get him elected here.

In related news, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Democrats are having a much more difficult time of getting donors to open their wallets. I guess the Kool Aid is wearing off.

Tags: bankers, DNC, Fundraiser, obama, Wall Street, white house