Big money is doing its damnedest to keep the Donald Trump fiasco from turning the Senate.
Two top outside groups designed to support Senate Republicans raised $42 million in August, a massive haul that shows the fervor with which GOP donors are training their focus—and dollars—on maintaining control of the upper chamber.
The gigantic fundraising number by Senate Leadership Fund and the related One Nation, groups with strong ties to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), helps underscore a driving dynamic this election: Donors, skeptical of Donald Trump and increasingly convinced he will lose in November, are turning away from the presidential race in an effort to save their legislative firewall on Capitol Hill.
These two groups alone have raised almost $100 million so far this cycle. That's not even taking into account the massive numbers that the Koch brothers and other groups are putting behind individual Senate campaigns, like Richard Burr's in North Carolina.
All that money is going right where you'd expect it to—New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Nevada—but also to states where few foresaw serious Democratic challenges in Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina. Where are they not even bothering to run ads? Illinois and Wisconsin, willing to let Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson figure it out on their own.
Massive amounts of money, dozens and dozens of campaign ads, none if it is going to be enough to wash the stench of Trump from these vulnerable Republicans. Nor is it going to make voters forget the fact of their years of obstruction, their huge collective unpopularity, and their refusal to do their jobs.
Can you pitch in $1 today to each of our Democratic challengers to fight big money?