Another Money Bomb
A couple of weeks ago, the Biden campaign hosted a fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall, featuring two of his predecessors—Obama and Clinton—and various celebrities. After originally declaring a haul of $33 million, the campaign revised the estimate for the night to $25 million—still a solid haul for one night’s work.
Not to be outdone, the Trump campaign hosted its own fundraiser over the weekend in Florida, declaring donations of a staggering $50.5 million. A huge—or yuge—amount…which surpassed the original estimate of $43 million.
A Trump campaign spokesperson noted that it took three presidents to bring in $25 million for Biden…but only one president, Trump, to double that amount.
At the very least, this may calm fears some Republicans have had about being outspent…they’re still rebuilding the RNC and playing catch up, but that’s a solid showing.
In one respect, it’s all Monopoly money—figures so high most of us can’t conceive of it.
And it’s tempting to look at all this money being spent on political campaigns and think it might be better spent elsewhere. “If only we’d apply that money toward curing cancer,” many say, we’d be better off as a society. And they’re probably right.
When I worked for colleges and universities, and a donor would drop a bundle down for this athletic team or that sports venue, faculty would say, “If only we’d apply that money toward the liberal arts, or a better lab for the sciences…”
The trick with that is that the donor wasn’t interested in contributing to the academic side…just the athletic side. So it’s not like sports took money that otherwise would have gone toward biology.
Same thing here. The folks who contribute to these political campaigns are choosing to spend their money that way; otherwise, they would have donated to curing cancer…and in fact, people with that kind of cash probably do both.
So yes, it seems like quite a waste. But it’s still chump change compared to last Saturday night’s Powerball jackpot…which, since I’m still doing this commentary, means I did not have the winning ticket.
