This is just a quick diary, but I felt it was important to point out something about Bernie Sanders' fundraising total next to Hillary Clinton's.
Hillary Clinton raised $45M in the second fundraising quarter. Bernie Sanders raised $15M. These are the facts: Clinton raised three times as much as Bernie Sanders in 2Q. But that's not the whole story. 2Q began on March 30th, and ended July 1st. Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy on April 12th. Thus, with $45M over 80 days, Hillary Clinton raised $562,500 per day on average.
Bernie Sanders announced his campaign on May 26th. Thus, with $15M over 36 days, Bernie Sanders raised $416,700 per day on average. If this dollars-per-day rate were constant, Bernie would have raised over $33M in the same period as Hillary raised $45M, and therefore, Hillary raised only 36% more than Bernie.
A few comments below the fold.
Now, caveat here is that these rates are not constant. Hillary probably raised an epic amount of grassroots money after her (two) announcement(s). Sanders probably received an initial burst, with fundraising dipping afterward and then steadily increasing as his campaign began to be taken more seriously. Or Hillary has been hitting the donor circuit pretty heavily, raking in the maximum $2700/person while Bernie has been soliciting small donors. We don't know the statistical details of this.
But what we do know is that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are absolutely competitive in fundraising, despite Bernie's general disdain for large-money donations. This doesn't factor in SuperPAC money either, as I don't believe Bernie even has a SuperPAC. Hillary has the monetary advantage; of that, there's no doubt. But don't let anyone tell you that Bernie isn't keeping up with Hillary's fundraising. He is.