Obama Outraised Clinton By 2 1 In March

Whatever the reason for the extra dollars, they couldn’t come at a better time for the Illinois senator. Obama Outraised Clinton By 2-1 In MarchBy Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 5th, 2008Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) collected an eye-popping $40 million in March for his presidential bid, making the large $20 million take for that month by Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) seem almost puny by comparison.Whether this is the result of Obama’s admitted personality strengths or the reaction of recent attacks on his former pastor–or both–the extra dollars couldn’t come at a better time for the Illinois senator.In politics as in many other things, money is power. The dollar advantage gives Obama a massive campaign treasury chest with which he may further whittle down Clinton’s current lead among Pennsylvania voters before its crucial Democratic primary on April 22nd.Such a wealth of new donations also has buttressed Obama’s argument to the anti-democratic, ‘superdelegate’ faction of the Democratic Party that he now has a vast donor and volunteer network too great to flatly ignore.Senator Obama has received donations from nearly 1.3 million people, primarily through the Internet.He has garnered a startling $131 million in the first quarter of 2008 alone; Clinton, by contrast,  pulled in $70 million during the same period. Against most candidates, the New York senator’s treasure chest would be quite an achievement.Regardless, she certainly has out-performed the clearly struggling presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain (R-AZ). His campaign has–perhaps tellingly–not yet disclosed its fundraising for March. What is known is that McCain has lagged far behind Obama and Clinton in the money race, only raking in a total of about $23 million for the first two months of the year.Who knew that running on a promise of continuing the worst policies of the most incompetent, unpopular president in living memory would be a campaign killer?David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, told reporters that he sees a double advantage from his campaign’s impressive fundraising.”Many of our contributors are volunteering for the campaign, making our campaign the largest grass-roots army in recent political history,” he claimed. While could not immediately verify this claim from Plouffe, we can verify that the Obama campaign’s grass-roots efforts–and results–are the best seen on the Democratic side of the political fence in quite a while.Clinton perhaps understandably gave her best spin on the fundraising issue to reporters at an apparent campaign stop in Burbank, CA.”We’re both raising huge amounts of money, and I am thrilled at how effective Democrats have been in raising money the last 15 or so months,” she said. Clinton was in California to sweep that state for additional campaign funds.This monetary development of course has given Obama a great spending edge over his party rival in Pennsylvania–the final huge delegate prize still on the Democratic candidate calendar.The Illinois senator already has purchased over $2.7 million of television advertisements in Pennsylvania, according to information compiled by TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a political ad watchdog group.Clinton, by comparison, has spent about $900,000 on Pennsylvania ads.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!