Keller @ Large: Does The Money Race Matter?
BOSTON (CBS) - The May presidential campaign fundraising figures are out, and they show that when it comes to cash on hand, the race is no contest.
Hillary Clinton had $42 million in the bank at month's end; Donald Trump had $1.3 million.
That is an unprecedented gap in modern presidential politics, and it has touched off an interesting debate - Does it show that Trump's campaign is hopelessly incompetent and headed for disaster? Or does the fact that Trump won the GOP nomination handily despite being buried by opponents' spending show that money is a grossly overrated factor?
After all, political history is full of stories about candidates who won the money race and lost the race that really counted.
In 2008 Hillary Clinton spent more than $250 million to lose to Barack Obama, who spent about $6 million less. That same year Mitt Romney dropped $113 million, nearly three times as much as the eventual winner, John McCain.
The Trump campaign argues that they can do again what they did in the primaries, generate enough free media coverage and exploit social media to give their message roughly equal - if not superior - exposure. But it hasn't really worked that way since Trump wrapped up the nomination. It turns out that buying your own ads and mailings enables you to control your message in a way that free media does not.
And as the Supreme Court has ruled, however controversially, campaign donations are a form of speech, voters voting with their wallets.
Money can't buy an election, it's true. But we may be about to find out if you can win an election after surrendering all the advantages that money can buy.
