First lady Michelle Obama is hitting the panic button.
The midterm elections “are less than 10 months away,” she told a Hollywood fundraiser Wednesday night.
“So starting right now, today, we need to be as passionate and as hungry as we were in 2008 and 2012,” she said.
“In fact we need to be even more passionate and more hungry, because these races will be even harder and even closer than those presidential elections,” she told the roughly 200 guests, which included various entertainment industry people, such as Barbra Streisand.
“What you need to do, I’m serious, write a big fat check,” she said, at a house in gated community in Hancock Park.
“Write the biggest check you can possibly write,” she told the guests, who paid up to $32,400 to stand close to President Barack Obama’s stand-in, and to eat gourmet pizza. “Writing the checks is the single most impactful thing you can do right now to affect the outcome of those midterms.”
The fundraiser was hosted by Phil Rosenthal, the creator of the popular sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
The Democrats are 17 seats away from regaining a majority in the House, but are also six seats away from losing the Senate, she said.
“What I want all of you to think about for just a minute is what could happen if we lose those six [Senate] seats,” she said, highlighting growing worries by progressives about their Senate majority.
A Republican majority in the Senate allow the repeal of Obamacare, she said.
The GOP could interfere with a woman’s ability to obtain contraception, she claimed, even though no GOP legislators actually want to ban contraceptives.
A GOP majority could also ban “same-sex marriage,” she said, according to the pool report.
Polls show the GOP is likely to gain some Senate seats. But GOP leaders are threatening to split the party — and dry up small-scale donations — this summer by pushing for a huge business-backed immigration increase and for an Obama-backed amnesty for at least 12 million illegal immigrants.
The first lady also sounded an alarm about state elections, suggesting that Democrats plan to invest heavily to defeat GOP governors this fall.
“Thirty-seven governor’s seats are up for grabs. … We’ve got state legislatures in play, and remember, these are the folks who draw those congressional districts,” she said.
In fact, the next redistricting process will happen in six years.
The first lady also served up some guilt along with the bromides, panic and pizza. “Let’s be clear, Barack cannot do this alone sitting by himself in the Oval Office,” she chided her supporters.
“It’s simply not enough to elect Barack Obama president if we don’t also elect leaders in Congress and in our state houses who will work with him to keep making the change we all believe in,” she told her well-dressed and wealthy listeners.