I predicted in a comment yesterday that Obama's campaign would announce today it had raked in over $40 million in donations for March. And...good news indeed! It seems that the Dinner with Barack campaign (which, I'll admit, got me to throw another $15 at Obama for auld lang syne) netted the Obama campaign another large haul, the Rev. Wright "scandal" notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign raked in...well, we don't know. according to Ben Smith, Clinton won't release her fundraising digits until the forms are due with the FEC on April 20th. That's very telling. I take it as meaning one of two things:
- The $20 million fundraising figure floated before today is fiction, and her take was significantly less.
- The campaign raked in $20 million, but either didn't lower or actually expanded its debt load.
I suspect it's the latter. Clinton's team has been playing a dangerous debt-game keeping the campaign afloat. It went into March with negligible money in the bank that it could spend on the Primary, relative to the $30m+ Obama had on hand. And now, with March coming in at a paltry $20 million tops, you can bet that they'll need to take some desperate measures to prop her up for the remaining contests.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is going around telling superdelegates like Bill Richardson that it's Obama who can't win the election? The chutzpah would be admirable, if it weren't so destructive. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the Superdelegates keep up their trend of aligning with Obama, and that we can start helping our candidate defeat John McCain within the next 30 days.
Update: Kab ibn al Ashraf has some, um, reactions from the Clinton campaign.