John McCain loves to be the underdog. In 2000, the insurgent spirit fueled his failed (but valorous) bid against George W. Bush for the Republican nomination, and his current campaign only found its footing after collapsing last summer under the weight of its own inevitability. So it was no surprise when McCain told voters in tiny Pipersville, Penn. yesterday that Barack Obama is this year's frontrunner. "Have no doubt, I am the underdog," he said, adding that he would remain in second place until right before the polls closed on Election Day. This is the frame through which McCain wants--and wants us--to see the 2008 presidential race. But is McCain really this cycle's scrappy insurgent? In some senses, sure. Right now, voters prefer a generic Democrat to a generic Republican by a wide 13-point margin. Sixty-eight percent of Americans are "very" or "somewhat" concerned that McCain will pursue policies too similar to those of George W. Bush, according to a new Gallup poll. McCain trails Obama by an average of six points in a head-to-head match-up. He hasn't led in the polls since May 3. The prediction whizzes over at FiveThirtyEight.com are projecting that Obama will win in the Electoral College by eighty votes. And from June 16 to 22, Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 76% of campaign coverage, compared with 53% for McCain. All of which contributes to the perception that McCain is, in his own words, fighting an "uphill battle."
That said, McCain currently holds a significant--and given what happened in the Democratic primaries, surprising--advantage over Obama in one of the most important measures of where the race stands at this point in the election cycle: cold, hard cash. When Obama opted out of the public-financing system, the MSM--including yours truly--made a big deal of the massive money edge he'd soon enjoy over McCain, who had chosen to accept (and therefore spend no more than) $84.1 million in taxpayer funds. The problem is, that limit is largely meaningless. Thanks to loopholes in the law, McCain can simply team up with the Republican National Committee, raise huge sums of private money and then spread it around as if it were his own--which is something he's proudly doing already.
The math is pretty easy. You've got individual contributions to the RNC, which are capped at $28,500--or twelve times the per-candidate ceiling of $2,300. You've got McCain's $84.1 million check. You've got the $19.1 million that McCain and the RNC are allowed to spend together. Finally, you've got the unlimited sum that the state and national party machinery can invest in "independent expenditures" and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts--a pool that totaled $53.1 million in 2004. All told, that equals at least $156.3 million in post-convention spending--and McCain's already seeing the effects. In May, McCain and the RNC outraised Obama and the DNC by more than 50 percent--$45.9 million to $28.1 million. And despite Obama's record-breaking primary haul of nearly $300 million, the Republican team currently leads its Democratic rivals in actual available cash by a whopping $38 million. Not too shabby.
Of course, this could (and probably will) change. Through May, Democratic donors were splitting their dinero between Obama and Hillary Clinton, and very few were cutting checks to the powerless DNC (total haul for May: less than $4 million). But now that Clintonites are donating to Obama and Democratic high-rollers are funneling their funds through the national party--Obama hosted star-studded, $28,500-a-head funder in Hollywood last week, for example--the nominee is bound to get a boost. That said, the RNC outraised the DNC by $40 million in 2004--which means that Obama must still rely on his network of 1.5 million (mostly small-sum) donors to stay competitive. Experts estimate that he'll rake in $300 million. But that's hardly money in the bank. For the moment, at least, it's McCain who has the upper hand here, oddly enough--and Obama who's the underdog.
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