Clinton fundraising strategy proving right on the money

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) scored two major wins with one announcement Tuesday.

Clinton’s morning announcement, that she raised $27 million in the third quarter — $22 million of which can be used for the primaries — not only cemented her place as the front-runner heading into the last quarter before the voting begins, but also blunted Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) latest attempt to control the news cycle.

{mosads}For analysts watching the race, it was telling what a difference a day makes.

While the rest of the Democratic field announced with varying degrees of certainty how much they had raised in the third quarter, Clinton, by waiting a day, successfully manipulated the expectations game to her maximum advantage.

Clinton’s announcement that her third-quarter numbers were dwarfing those of her rivals came on the same day Obama was commemorating the five-year anniversary of his first speech decrying talk of going to war in Iraq — a central point in his argument that his judgment trumps Clinton’s Washington experience — with a speech in which he hit his rivals hard for the votes to go to war.

“I can’t imagine that the timing is purely coincidental,” a political science professor at Fordham University, Costas Panagopoulos, said.

Panagopoulos, who was a fellow in Clinton's office in 2004 and 2005, said if Obama timed his speech and subsequent campaign swing to minimize “any negative fallout from any lackluster fundraising … they seriously miscalculated.”

“I haven’t seen anything about this tour, and I’m following it very closely,” Panagopoulos said.

At the close of both the first and second quarters, it was Obama who won the expectations game, shocking the political world by besting Clinton both times with record-shattering amounts. He reported raising about $25 million in the first quarter and $33 million in the second.

But Clinton’s third-quarter announcement, likely timed to stop any momentum Obama hoped to gain from an impressive but wanting third-quarter amount and the anniversary of his anti-Iraq war speech, might have been the best use of the expectations game this year.

Political analyst Charlie Cook noted that Clinton’s third-quarter numbers “do nothing to disrupt the current narrative that Clinton is in a dominant position.”

“It’s too strong to say she’s the odds-on favorite, but the chances of someone catching her are getting longer,” Cook said.
Panagopoulos said Obama and the rest of the Democratic field must now fear that that narrative — of Clinton as the inevitable nominee — is hardening.

“Perceptions are really important here, and sometimes perceptions become reality,” Panagopoulos said. “The fact that Obama seems to be languishing is going to create a perception that his campaign is at a standstill.”

Panagopoulos noted that Obama’s third-quarter haul of $20 million and the fact that he still has more primary cash in the bank than Clinton shouldn’t go without note, but said the third-quarter results matter more going forward.

“That is not chump change, but at the end of the day … that message is getting lost in the shuffle,” he said.

And with the fourth quarter under way and the primary schedule slated to kick off earlier than ever, the importance of this week’s turn of events can’t be overstated. These results, Panagopoulos said, have become “absolutely crucial.”

“The third quarter sets the stage for the final quarter before the balloting actually begins,” Panagopoulos said.