The Republican Nightmare Scenario. As I mentioned recently, Republican political strategist Patrick Ruffini estimated Barack Obama as being on track for
making $60M in February.
Well, I've seen Ruffini's figures and methodology for this, and frankly, he's using old data.
The Obama campaign has an
end-of-the-month drive for 1 Million donors, and only has about 13K left to go, after about an 18K day yesterday. I suspect they'll get about 25K new donors by the end of the month, which, when added to their
current figures since the beginning of the year, would equal 810K new donors since January, minus the 256K donors Ruffini mentioned in January, which means 554K new donors in February.
Multiply that by an average of $140 as Ruffini does, and you get
$77.5 million for February, over twice what the Obama campaign brought in during January. No, I am not saying that Obama will raise that much money for the month, but it does seem quite possible.
The number of Obama donors has been doubling every 15 days, and who knows how much bigger Obama's list of donors might get, especially if his campaign rolls up Clinton's contributors and fundraisers. Just how viral is his campaign, and how far can it grow before slowing down, especially once Clinton backs out of the race?
If it's one million people by the end of February, could its viral growth lead it to become two million next month, or maybe four million the month after that? In a country of 300 million people, just how much room is there realistically for Obama's base of donors to keep doubling?
Ruffini, As a Republican, Ruffini is
very concerned about the possibility of McCain being outspent 3-1, and Obama actively campaigning in 25 states rather than McCain’s 15-20.
"Right now, it is not the case anywhere in the Republican Party that upper campaign leadership is concerned about this as an overriding strategic and existential challenge for the party. They should be." Frankly, if I were him, I would be more concerned that Obama's snowballing growth of contributors just cannot be caught up to by McCain, who lacks grassroots and is far, far behind on the online fundraising growth path. McCain could find himself tied up doing big money fundraisers just to stay marginally competitive, while Obama speaks to tens of thousands of voters.
The real nightmare for Republicans is, what happens if Barack Obama outspends them by *more* than a 3-1 margin, with national advertising and a fully funded grassroots campaign in all fifty states?