Friday, April 4, 2008
Barack Obama raised $40 million in March — twice as much as Hillary Clinton, who took in $20 million in her second-best fundraising month, the campaigns announced Thursday.
Obama raised a record $55 million in February. 442,000 donors gave an average of $96 dollars to the Obama 2008 campaign and mostly via the internet.
Campaign manager David Plouffe said:
“Sen. Obama has always said that this campaign would rise or fall on the willingness of the American people to become partners in an effort to change our politics and start a new chapter in our history. Today we’re seeing the American people’s extraordinary desire to change Washington, as tens of thousands of new contributors joined the more than a million Americans who have already taken ownership of this campaign for change. Many of our contributors are volunteering for the campaign, making our campaign the largest grass-roots army in recent political history.”
The campaign’s figures:
Total raised in March: more than $40 million
Contributors in March: more than 442,000
First-time contributors in March: more than 218,000
Average contribution: $96
Total contributors to date: more than 1,276,000
From the Left 
But now money doesn’t matter…I suspect that is what Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson will say.
If Hillary had raised the most money they would trumpet it as a sign that she is the presumptive nominee.
Can’t wait for this shit to be over with.
$40 million is some serious coin. Especially, since it follows the $55 million from February. Obama has money to burn and no one can outspend him. Good.
The mark of a real movement is when the people give of their limited treasure as opposed to the wealth of a few.
There are many reasons why it would be so good for this country to have Barack Obama elected President, and this is one of them.
If he can be successful running a political campaign that operates from the bottom up rather than the top down, and that partners with the people, takes most of its donations from small donors, and actively engages over a million people to get involved, then we will begin to see other politicians use this strategy for winning.
If he can do this, then it will become the model for political success in the future. Other politicians will want to emulate this successful formula. But it will require them to actively engage and listen to their constituents and rely on them for financial support. And our country will be the better for it.
In this final stretch leading up to North Carolina, Obama will need every penny of it to pushback against the Clinton machine.
Remember, the media favors Clinton, CNN favors Clinton, many major newspapers favor Clinton and Air America favors Clinton. That is a lot of bias to go head-to-head with and still get your message out.
Initially, I doubted the claims the 2008 presidential campaign would cost $1 billion. Now I see how it will easily reach this point.
One interesting thing is that both campaigns are taking in less money. I think that it partly is due to the crappy Reagan/Bush/Clinton economy.