Democratic Party

War of Attrition

As momentum and cash favor the Obama campaign, Senator Clinton's cash situation is playing out to be more important than delegates or superdelegates. Tagaris at Open Left believes that the Clintons are in serious trouble and possibly dipping into their own wealth:

Her big donors are maxed out.

How much further can self-funding be, if we're not already there?

Unfortunately, absent an admission, we won't find out for sure until the last day of February, when the next reporting numbers are due.

Senator Obama's January: $32 million
Senator Clinton's January: $13 million

Senator Clinton needs to be winning the money game in order to counter the Obama momentum. As long as Senator Obama is winning on cash and winning on momentum, he can go and go and go. This is the story of the next 30 days.

Also, Senator Obama was on the TV this morning smartly labeling himself the underdog and even said, "Senator Clinton is the frontrunner." Democrats and the blogotubes love underdogs.

UPDATE: Sargent has word from Clinton spokesperson, Howard Wolfson:

Late last month Senator Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million.The loan illustrates Sen. Clinton’s commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation. We have had one of our best fundraising efforts ever on the web stoday and our Super Tuesday victories will only help in bringing more support for her candidacy.

$5 million is a little less than half of all the money they raised from outside sources. In other words, that's a lot.