News from David Plouffe of Team Obama this morning:
In the month of June, supporters like you helped raise $52 million. And together with the DNC, we now have nearly $72 million in the bank. That’s a very strong financial position to be in.
But we remain at a massive disadvantage to our opponents.
As I mentioned in my video message earlier in the week, the McCain Campaign and the Republican National Committee finished June with nearly $100 million in the bank.*
Good for Team Obama, but we’re left wondering… why all the secrecy? Why wait until mid-month to reveal they raised more than twice what the McCain campaign raised?
It’s a fine bounce-back for Obama… but pretty far from the $100 million some of his supporters were talking about.
UPDATE: A reader articulates my second reaction:
So Obama outraised McCain more than 2:1 in June and still has $23 million LESS than McCain/RNC. Amazing. Howard Dean is a catastrophe for the DNC. Also, Obama’s cash burn rate must be incredible, and he still has only a 3-4% lead in July to show for it.
Obama ended May with $43 million cash on hand, McCain ended the month with $31.6 million on hand.
The DNC ended May with $3.9 million cash on hand, the RNC, $53.5 million. CNN puts the current McCain/RNC combined cash on hand total at $95 million.
According to this article, the DNC increased it’s cash on hand over the past month from $3.9 million… to $4 million? They pretty much spent it as fast as it came in?
So the Obama/DNC cash-on-hand total increased by $25 million, but the McCain/RNC total increased by $10 million. And this was in the month that Obama clinched the nomination, the Hillary donors were supposed to come home, the first general election ads went up…
[If the DNC contributed nothing to the cash on hand total, and the Obama campaign raised $52 million, does this mean Obama’s campaign spent $27 million in June?]
* UPDATE: According to Ben Smith, the DNC had a terrific month, and Plouffe’s “give more now” justification is, uh, inoperable: “Obama alone has $72 million on hand; the Democratic National Committee, spokeswoman Karen Finney says, raised more than $22 million last month and has more than $20 million on hand. In total, the Democrats have some $92 million on hand, to the combined Republican total of $95 million.”