As I mentioned before Clinton and Obama essentially split the Super Tuesday campaigns. But the stories coming out of the two campaigns tonight are dramatically different. Clinton had to loan her campaign $5 million and some of her staffers are “voluntarily” going unpaid. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is set to have raised $5 million in the past 24 hours.
While this is almost certainly good news for the Obama campaign, nobody should start gloating yet. I was a huge Howard Dean supporter back in 2003-2004, and I remember feeling pretty confident as Dean was raising wads of cash and Kerry was loaning himself money. Turns out that confidence was misplaced. However, this sort of cash disparity this far into the campaign strikes me as a different animal. I’ve also heard reports that something like 80% of Clinton contributors have reached the donation limit whereas more like 20% – 30% of Obama’s supporters have hit the limit.
Still, the worst thing for the Obama campaign would be for the candidate or his supporters to get too smug and start taking things for granted just about now.
At last we’re starting to see that money isn’t the end-all, be-all. Clinton may be struggling with the cash right now, but I fully expect that she’ll win the nomination. Ron Paul has been raising gobs of money, but isn’t making a dent.
My opinion is that the will of the party establishments mean far more than the dollars that can be raised from the people. Anyone think that’s healthier?
The Ron Paul thing baffles me a little. Seems like with that much of a money advantage, he should’ve at least made enough of a dent that various well educated people shouldn’t be asking me in confusion, “who is this Ron Paul guy?” Even if people weren’t going to vote for him, it seems like with that much money people should’ve at least heard of him. I wonder if he was using his money very effectively and you just simply can’t penetrate without mainstream media cooperation or if he was just blowing his cash in ineffective ways.
The Massons may have contributed to that 5 million fund-raiser.