This is a spoiler alert for Clinton allies who ought to issue a spoiler alert every time they speak in public; the "perpetual growth" formula is dinosaur economics. We don't want to hear about it anymore.
We all know Hillary is running. Although rumor has it she would rather wait "as late as possible" before officially announcing her candidacy, we already know. Clinton allies have made sure of it for years now. And as far back as March, they were making an enormous cost projection for paying their own campaign-aid salaries:
...the entire Clinton effort — including all the current super PAC projects and an actual campaign — will cost a cool $1.7 billion in total. That back-of-the-envelope calculation is based on [Craig Smith's] observation that in each presidential campaign the victor ends up spending about 150% of what the winner spent four years before.
I repeat: the perpetual growth formula is a dinosaur. It's got a nickname: bubble economics. When is it going to end? No really, when does this exponentially-expanding money-in-politics bubble going to explode in our faces?
If you push bubble economics down the American public's throat, something is going to pop. And I don't mean that in a "boy, does that billion dollar sign shine! That really makes your campaign pop" kinda way. I mean that Americans might just pop you in the nose if you ask us for campaign contributions based on bubble-number crunching.
Old news for many, I know... Until the donation requests start flooding our mail and inboxes. We all know the twitter storm is gathering. The already-spoiled spoiler alert for Clinton allies is this: Nothing says "let them eat cake" in a campaign more clearly then telling us we need to contribute to a perpetual growth machine bubble in order to get to the White House.
Don't you know the name of Hillary Clinton is already a household word? even in the White House. That familiarity is already worth more than you think. Rather than spending 150% of your time and effort raising your gabillion, you might want to focus on some clarifications of your message. At a time when most Americans are struggling so much that it seems like the 1930s have been resurrected, when people all over the place are angrilly muttering about the 1%, you're going to casually assume a bubble approach to the question of Ms. Clinton's campaign and its 150% afforability will rally us all behind you? It's going to be harder than you think to get that money if you're going to be that laissez faire about "perpetual growth."
Two things: First, the message needs to make a clear, strong human connection between HRH (Her Royal Hillary) and the plebes down on Main Street. Not Wall Street, but Main Street. That's going to take a good deal of your time and effort to achieve; you can't just buy it.
Second, rather than telling us how Hillary is emphatically NOT Barack Obama, your time would be better spent letting us know how and why she is not Bill Clinton. Now that is a big challenge. But if you don't do that, your fundraising twitter storm will become no more than another dot com bubble.
I'd really like to see you do it. I'd like to see you run an awesome and informative though thrifty campaign that makes at least an attempt to get the money out of politics while juggling our nation's love/hate relationship with the Clintons into an act that's fit for Main Street. Not Wall Street, MAIN STREET.
And I would love to see Bill Clinton back in the White House, not because I am pining away for the good old dot com bubble days, but because I would love to see him assume a very fitting role. Bill Clinton as our nation's first First Lady with an Adam's Apple? Priceless.
There's a good deal of work ahead of you. Stop issuing spoiled spoiler alerts and get cracking! Remember: Keep your eye on the prize.