Clinton will have to put it away tomorrow.

Not to mention that he also has a real edge when he has more TIME to meet the citizens of any given state.

TIME is MONEY.

I think if Clinton can maintain 13m per month fund raising I don't think money will be that large a problem and Clinton can forsake a few of the smaller states to Obama if she wins NY, NJ, CA, and MA without much of a negative impact.

I very much doubt Obama can win TX or PA no matter how much facetime he gets.

I take this news as more of an indicator of Obama's momentum, rather than just a financial benchmark, because Obama is raising his money from lots of small donors.  That says to me that he has the stronger populist thing going, which translates into real votes.  Hilary has a much higher % of $2000++ donors, which is consistent with her mainstream, top-down, old style politics.  We da people are for Obama, the entrenched interests are much more likely to back Clinton.

Even if these upcoming states in Feb favor Obama, Hillary will still be picking up delegates in them and lets not forget TX, OH and PA could be firewalls for Clinton. In Ohio she has the backing of Ted Strickland who has what 70 percent approval ratings??? Maybe if she needs to Hillary could throw a hail mary pass and just choose her running mate like Reagan in 76. Clinton-Strickland anyone??? She has a large advantage in endorsements in TX and factor in the large latino vote. PA she has the Rendell Philly machine backing her. As long as Hillary does well tomorrow she will be fine. In fact if she wins in the high teens in terms of states I doubt she will be hurting for money

the maxed out donor numbers... Wasn't there a report last fall that HRC was somewhere in the 70% range on maxed donors while Obama was somewhere in the teens?

I gotta think there just isn't much money left for HRC... at least directly.  I guess we might always see a 527 pop up.

This is really important.  As much as everyone thinks 2/5 is going to decide everything, it is likely to decide significantly less than that -- the margin isn't going to give anyone a TKO in delegates, which is what HRC needed.  The national poll #s have narrowed markedly, so no one has an advantage there, either.

Here's why I think it is important:

Also the press is more focused on process (easy, don't have to take sides in political dispute) rather than policy (complicated, nuanced, etc...)

Let's say HRC wins by less than 100 delegates on 2/5, giving her roughly a 60 delegate edge overall.

She then has to pick and choose which states to pick on 2/9 and 2/12, most of which favor Obama while still having enough for OH, TX, PA.  The press will pick up on that and focus that she's not competing in certain states (Louisiana, for example) and the process story becomes "campaign in trouble."  Not to mention the signal it gives to unpledged superdelegates in the state in which you're not competing very hard.

In addition, we still don't know her burn rate.  This is an unprecedented cycle in both fundraising and spending.  It isn't out of the realm of possibility to raise $10M and have a $10M negative cash flow in a month like January (2/5 prep, etc...).  She had $17M cash on hand at the beginning of January -- I suspect she's probably going to be at under $10M now (with less of an ability to raise going forward as her contributors have maxed out).

Oh, and McAulliffe's statement:  we don't know how much of that $13M is for the general and how much for the primary.

Logic: most of the people who can afford to donate $60 to $150 to a political campaign are upper middle class, or well off, people or college students who are the children of well off people. Clinton does best among Democrats earning less than $50k, they can't afford to donate to a campaign.

Now, to be honest I think Clinton could be doing a lot better with small dollar donors online if she tried. But Obama has a much bigger prospect pool among the 'creative class' who can afford to donate to him online.

How does this constitute poisoning the well?

Don't forget folks.  The fact is that Hillary WAS supposed to have it all wrapped up by now.  The fact that she is being outraised and outperformed by Barack Obama (in spite of VERRRRY favorable media coverage at every turn) is a HUGE win for Obama.  Talk about momentum?  

Holy cow...Barack has a lot because he has gone toe-to-toe with the greatest (and devisive) politcal machine in recent years. But the problem is machines have NO SOUL.

Neither one will leave super tuesday putting the other away, but to be intellectually honest folks...that in and of itself is a HUGE WIN for Obama given the buzz saw that had been fired up before it encounted something a little more sturdy!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/200802 04/pl_bloomberg/apnpwl7xnjik

She raised close to $800K from Lobbyists.  He raised nothing.  And yet he still won 2 1/2 to 1.  Wow!

This shows how different these campaigns are and the power base behind the support-- lobbyists vs. real people.