And the Obama campaign said they thought the numbers were going down in June. First reaction here was that some major donors had to have chipped in. But no. The average contribution was $68. You and me and 764,000+ supporters. That's $30 million more than McCain raised. However, there's more to the story.
Last week, Senator John McCain announced that he had raised $22 million in June, which was the best fund-raising month of his campaign. So while Mr. Obama’s $52 million haul is significantly higher, he also faces a bigger fund-raising burden because of his decision to not accept public financing.
In his message to supporters on Thursday, Mr. Plouffe said the Obama campaign ended the month of June with a combined total of nearly $72 million in the bank. While he called it “a healthy number,” he noted that Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee finished June with nearly $100 million on hand.
“We’re facing a Republican machine with unprecedented resources at its disposal,” Mr. Plouffe said.
It's not just money flowing towards Obama. He gets considerably more coverage than his opponent(s). In the same article that described the risen-from-the-grave "media stars" who will be accompanying Obama on his upcoming trip, Jim Rutenberg describes the imbalance of media coverage.
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that the three newscasts by the networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent roughly 114 minutes covering Mr. Obama since June. They spent about 48 minutes covering Mr. McCain, who made the rounds of the evening newscasts in satellite interviews last week.
As for the heavy coverage planned for Mr. Obama’s trip, the network executives said in interviews that, once again, the Democratic candidate was potentially benefiting from being a newer, untested politician. To that end, his first visit overseas since becoming the party’s presumptive nominee would be an opportunity for voters to see how Mr. Obama handles two of their major concerns: national security and foreign affairs.
As the Times points out, the same cameras that pick up the high moments are also there when there's a nasty little slip.
The large news media contingent that will travel with Mr. Obama will be a help if the trip goes wonderfully. But any gaffes will take place before a larger megaphone.
