Bernie Sanders Raises $44 Million In March
Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be the Democratic nominee for President, but that isn’t stopping him from raising impressive amounts of money:
Bernie Sanders broke his monthly fundraising record in March, pulling in more than $44 million, his campaign announced Friday following the midnight filing deadline with the Federal Election Commission.
“What this campaign is doing is bringing together millions of people contributing an average of just $27 each to take on a billionaire class which is so used to buying elections,” Sanders said in a statement released through the campaign. “Working people standing together are going to propel this campaign to the Democratic nomination and then the White House.”
The total broke Sanders’ record of $43.5 million set in February, bringing the Vermont senator’s total for the first quarter to $109 million. According to the campaign, Sanders has received more than 6.5 million individual contributions from 2 million donors.
“I don’t think I’m too far off to say that this is a headline few in the political establishment would have thought possible even a couple months ago: ‘Bernie Sanders outraises Hillary Clinton for third month straight; aims to win Wisconsin on Tuesday,'” campaign manager Jeff Weaver wrote in an email to supporters Thursday afternoon. “If we all pull together today, we could wake up to that headline tomorrow. And based on the response already today, I think it’s very possible.”
Hillary Clinton has not released her fundraising numbers for the month, but it seems as though she will fall short of meeting Sanders’ number even though she may beat him for the First Quarter as a whole and more than beats him when you include outside money such as contributions to SuperPACs. At the very least, this would indicate that Sanders is unlikely to drop out of the race any time soon.
Everyone pays attention to the nervous breakdown in the GOP, but the less-flashy dysfunction on the Democratic side is just as real. They abandoned Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy as soon as they could and apparently learned nothing from Obama’s campaigns either. The party is still consumed by a Clintonian mindset of sucking up to Big Business and the “serious” foreign policy crowd while using the awfulness of the Republicans as a cudgel to keep their own interest groups in line.
It looks like it may work again but just like with conservatives and xenophobia, race-baiting and dominance politics, the tiger they are riding is going to throw them off one day.
Mike