Dem
51
GOP
49
Joe Biden's fiery SOTU speech went over well with Democrats. Even Ezra Klein concedes that Biden ought to run for president. That's big of him, given that until Thursday he wanted Biden to go back to Delaware. But more importantly, Biden raised $10 million in the 24 hours after his speech. That's his biggest 24-hour haul ever. The money came in as 116,000 donations, which averages to $88 each, quite a large average donation, which means there must have been quite a few donations at or near the $6,600 maximum ($3,300 for the primary and $3,300 for the general election). The Democrats are definitely on a roll, financially. In January, the DNC and other Party groups raised $42 million. At the end of January, Biden's campaign had $56 million in the bank, compared to Donald Trump's $30 million.
Both parties and candidates will be raising money like crazy all year. Will it matter? Maybe a little bit. Biden has actually achieved quite a bit despite not having a functional majority in Congress, but not everyone knows about all the bills he signed. With $66 million on hand already, Biden can start telling people what he did so far. That could help. It is less clear what Trump will do with all his money. Tell everyone that he won the 2020 election and that Democrats are socialists? The base believes that already and it is unlikely repeating the message 20 times every evening on TV is going to bring in many converts. Of course, if both parties are smart, they will reserve a large piece of the cash for the ground war, especially getting marginal voters registered, starting now. But let's be honest, Trump is going to spend as much of that money as he can to defray his legal bills. (V)