Biden Is Rolling In Cash. Trump Is Broke As Fuck
Not the story the press wants to talk about but it matters. A lot.
Elisha, a Facebook acquaintance, sent me an AP article about Biden’s outrageous fundraising numbers:
How big of a deal is this? Well, ever since Republicans had their puppets on the Supreme Court open the door to infinite campaign spending with the infinitely corrupt Citizens United ruling, money has been a determining factor in politics. You have it, you tend to win. You don’t, good luck to you.
The thought process was obviously that Republicans, with their army of fascist billionaires and corporate sugar daddies, would have a permanent advantage. That they would forever be able to outraise and outspend Democrats.
Reality has not quite worked out that way:
The president raised $53 million alone last month, which was the strongest grassroots fundraising month since the campaign launched, according to campaign officials. Among those efforts was a contest for supporters to attend a fundraiser on March 28 in New York with Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton that raised $4 million last month.
“The enthusiasm we’re picking up as we go around the country is real,” Biden said in a radio interview with WNOV 860 in Wisconsin last week. “We’ve raised a whole lot of money. We have 1.5 million donors, including 500,000 are brand new, they’re small donors; 97% of the donations under $200.”
Turns out that people will donate, a lot, when properly motivated. And Democrats have gotten very good at grassroots fundraising. Republicans are great at grassroots fundraising lining their their own pockets. Not nearly as good at raising money from non-billionaires to win elections. Maybe if they stopped grifting for ten seconds?
This problem has been exacerbated by Trump the human money pit. Not only does his WinRed platform skim millions from suckers donors, but he’s been diverting most (all) of the money donated to his “campaign” to fight his court battles:
Trump’s February figures have not been released. By the end of January, his two major committees had just $36.6 million in cash on hand, and those committees collectively spent more than they took in that month. A major driver of those costs was millions of dollars in legal fees from Trump’s myriad court cases. The figures are only a partial snapshot of the Trump operation’s finances because other branches won’t have to disclose their numbers until April.
The RNC is also being vastly outraised by the DNC and now that Trump owns it, none of even that small amount of money is going anywhere except into his bank account.
Donald Trump: April’s Fool
So, what’s the real story here? First, Biden raking in a gazillion dollars seriously disrupts the narrative that there is no voter enthusiasm for him. Just to clarify, if Trump was raising huge amounts of money, the press would be screaming about it on their front pages. But he’s not. Biden is. So don’t expect to hear much about it unless the headline is “Is Biden Raising TOO Much Money?”
Second, and this is going to be a really Big Fucking deal in April, is that Trump’s fundraising is catastrophically bad. How do we know this if we haven’t seen all of the numbers yet?
It’s actually very simple: Trump isn’t talking about it.
When has Trump ever not bragged about good news? If his fundraising was even on par with Biden’s he would never shut the fuck up about it and the press would make sure to publish that on the front page every day. But is that something you hear about much from Trumpland? No. So I am quite comfortable saying that, in addition to what we can already see, Trump’s overall fundraiser is in the toilet.
So when those numbers drop next month, the right is going to freak the fuck out about it. Especially since the more astute of them will realize that the less-than-impressive fundraising haul will be depleted almost entirely by Trump’s voracious greed.
Biden’s campaign is already locking in millions in ad buys for the months leading up to election day. Trump won’t be able to afford anything but the free publicity the press will give him. Granted, that will be a lot but it wasn’t enough in 2020 and there’s no reason to believe it will be enough this time, either.
Speaking of the press, pay very close attention to how they report on Trump’s money woes. Or rather, how they don’t report on it. Just as they’re not interested in talking about Biden’s massive show of grassroots support, the press will be equally as indifferent to Trump’s stunning lack of grassroots support.
It’s hard to maintain the fiction that Trump is a dominant force if most of his base won’t even send him $5.
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As always, I could be wrong. April could roll around and we could discover that Trump has had a secret fundraising powerhouse all along. But…nah.
With less than 8 months left to the election, Trump has to rebuild his entire fundraising operation from scratch. Impossible? No. Bloody unlikely? Yes. Especially with the assortment of Yes-Men, criminals, and grifters he’s surrounded himself with. He’s got some actual professionals in there this time but, wow, do they have their work cut out for them. And, again, most of what they raise will not go towards re-election but Trump’s lawyers.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden gets to pour immense resources into getting the vote out in swing states and vulnerable swing districts. Dark Brandon has his eyes on the prize.
There are 231 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
As Justin’s often noted here if Biden wins and we can follow up with another Democratic president in 2028 the Republican Party will have almost completely self-destructed as a viable party (an immensely good thing).
But also, just maybe, 12 (or more) years of competent, boring, effective governing will mean political reporting isn’t a cash cow for the media and they’ll turn to some other thing (sports? celebrity divorce trials?) for their lie-in-headlines-to-generate-clicks “reporting”.
Our lives do, indeed, depend on it!