After the fourth quarter of 2007, we thought the donations war was over until the next quarterly FEC reports. How naive.
It’s gotten only more intense. First, Obama announced his fund-raising totals for January: $32 million. Hillary wouldn’t say how much she had raised that month—she told reporters they could wait to see the reports—but her campaign chairman blurted to MSNBC that it was somewhere around $13.5 million.
Then on Wednesday, word leaked that Hillary had loaned herself $5 million. At first, the news seemed dire. The campaign immediately sent out an e-mail to supporters setting a fund-raising goal of $3 million in three days. They got $6.4 million in two days. Act of desperation or brilliant fund-raising ploy? You decide.
Obama’s camp tried to regain the moment by announcing that it had raised $7.2 million in the same 48 hours. Then today, Clinton’s team announced that it has raised $8 million since Super Tuesday.
Do I hear 8.1? $8.1 million, anybody?
This is the problem with a contest that drags on past Super Tuesday: The campaigns find smaller and smaller things to bicker over. At this point, they might as well hold 24-hour conference calls with running financial updates, taking breaks only when they fall behind in the monetary arms race. We’ll update you when the Obama campaign sends out its counter-statement. Probably, oh, five minutes from now.
