Democratic Primary News

First off, congrats to AB on hitting the 50,000 mark Monday!

Second, here’s a piece of interesting and brand new Democratic primary news: Howard Dean’s campaign has put up “the bat” – i.e., their fundraising goal for the last 10 days of the quarter (which ends September 30). Their goal is pretty astonishing.

You may remember that at the end of the previous quarter, the Dean campaign blew everyone away by raising well over $7 million, which was millions ahead of his nearest rival. The record for fundraising in any quarter by a Democrat during the primary season is held by Bill Clinton, who raised $10.3 million in this quarter in 1996. One last piece of context: the highest estimates of funds raised by Gephardt, Kerry, or anyone else for this quarter are around $5 million.

The newly announced Dean campaign goal is to raise $5 million… in just 10 days.

Based on that, I would guess that their overall total for the quarter will therefore be in the neighborhood of $14 – $15 million. Which will truly make Dean the 800 pound gorilla of the Democratic candidates. Whatever your preference regarding the 10 Democratic candidates is, this has to contribute to the notion that it’s going to be really tough for anyone to stop Dean from getting the nomination at this point. Is it time to get used to a Dean v. Bush matchup?

Kash