It's The Money -- And It's Over
Wed Feb 13, 2008 at 12:34:01 AM PDT
For Hillary, money gets A LOT harder to come by after tonight. After next Tuesday, she'll have almost nothing coming in.
Look at it this way, it costs Superdelegates nothing to delay their decision to support Obama. Doesn't cost them a dime. But campaign donors? That's money, folks. Money requires a MUCH higher burden of proof than support -- proof that it's not just money going down a hole. Support is vapor. Air. Money is an investment. Money... is fucking money!
And even before tonight, even with Hillary's much touted $10 million in four days or whatever it was, Hillary was bring in the dollars at 1/3rd the rate Obama was. Yes, that's since Super Tuesday.
So if it was 1/3rd of Obama's intake before tonight's crushing losses, what will it be now? 1/4? 1/5th? Less?
None of the TV commentators talked money tonight and what this does to her. Her donors know it though, and so does she. More than anything else, tonight was the money tipping point and that will bring this to a close a lot quicker than lagging support.
Like soon.
I've been around the financial portion of campaigns a bit (didn't manage it but I saw it) and it's nearly always what shuts them down. Money is going to shut Hillary down WAY before we need to worry about Superdelegates or Michigan or Florida. In fact, Hillary's campaign has no intention of using Superdelegates or Michigan or Florida. They're just trotting those out in front of their donors in desperation. Not their supporters. Their donors.
Go over to Hillary is 44 dot com and you'll see the usual calls for donations and people saying they sent in $10.44 just today, just like it was a week ago.
The difference is that last week most those donors were actually sending in that money instead of just typing it on a blog.
Money is a hell of a thing. Look at the Intrade elections futures tonight. You can buy Obama for 73.5 and Hillary at 28. Watch it this week and next Tuesday night. Intrade doesn't track support very tightly but it DOES track campaign contributions nearly perfectly, because it's the same thing. Money.
A campaign contribution is an investment.
Hillary's money dries up horribly after tonight. More and more, people asking others to "donate donate donate!", are probaly not donating donating donating themselves. Some of the folks bragging they donated actually did, but that tracks Intrade also. The more Hillary's Intrade number drops, they fewer of those bragging about donating actually did. Note: this doesn't make them bad people, just yer average online political person. They, in fact, HAVE donated before. They're just doing it less and less.
This may be hard for some people to believe, but anyone associated with campaigns knows it is true. Hillary knows it's true.
Texas and Ohio are going to cost money Hillary doesn't have and can't get. You might think she should be putting all her money into Wisconsin, in order to avoid a further choke on donations. That she isn't, means the majority of the damage was done tonight. She's putting what money she has into Texas and Ohio in the hope of keeping Obama from increasing in the polls we'll start seeing. Won't matter though.
It's over tonight. Maybe I should say it's decided tonight, but it will be over sooner than the talking heads are guessing and it will be over because of money.
Permalink | 101 comments