Fundraising Leaks

Marc Ambinder has the information and it may well even be true. John Edwards with $15 million on hand is expected to have way less money than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but almost as much as the wealthiest Republican, Mitt Romney, who Mark's projecting at $18 million. Long story short, the combined Democratic fundraising is absolutely crushing the GOP side. Clinton is projected to have somewhat more cash on hand than Romney and Giuliani combined.

Comments

The Bush-McCain Axis of Amnesty sure is motivating the GOP base to give and give! That Karl Rove sure is a "genius."

Mission Accomplished!

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 18, 2007 9:52 PM

Yeah, but a lot of that is that noone on the right really thinks that the existing candidates will be the nominee, because they're unhappy with them all. You don't ahve taht dynamic on teh Democratic side, so more money that iwll be given has already been given for dems.

Posted by yoyo | June 18, 2007 9:58 PM

Yes, let's never forget that the 5 most important issues facing America are 1) campaign fundraising activities, 2) polling, 3) focus groups, 4) political consultant hiring & firing, and 5) campaign strategy.

Posted by kafka | June 18, 2007 10:36 PM

“Yes, let's never forget that the 5 most important issues facing America are 1) campaign fundraising activities, 2) polling, 3) focus groups, 4) political consultant hiring & firing, and 5) campaign strategy.”

Heh. This sort of political coverage is distorting and upsetting, but I think it's a nearly inevitable consequence that political reporters and opinion writers are naturally going to see elections as horse-races because their intense interest in politics in general brings this stuff into their depth of field. Not unlike how MY blogs about the management and operations side of NBA teams.

You can ask that they not assume their audience shares this interest and they should try to avoid it out of civic interest. But the political junkies in the audience also suffer from this tendency and they will ask for that coverage. The journalists will also feel that it is, after all, of consequence and part of how the political process works and so not revealing this info is perhaps a shirking of their civic duty, not performing it.

So what to do?

I don't know, I never went to j-school. I imagine this is talked about quite a bit in those joints. As it should be. Maybe journalists should always try to contextualize this horse-race coverage into issues and policies.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | June 18, 2007 10:56 PM

Long story short, the combined Democratic fundraising is absolutely crushing the GOP side.

Sure, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. This is mostly primary fundraising, so the vast Democratic warchests can really only be used against each other. There's no real reason to believe the Republican donors won't show up when their money can be used to bash Clinton, Obama, or Edwards.

Posted by right | June 19, 2007 3:54 AM

[T]he combined Democratic fundraising is absolutely crushing the GOP side

Is this good news or merely evidence that the leading Democrats have been bought off?

Posted by Duncan Kinder | June 19, 2007 11:24 AM

QUESTION? Are these Mark's predictions, or from anonymous sources?

Posted by JoeCHI | June 19, 2007 11:40 AM