• Sign that Obama is getting closer to being seen as the mainstream Dem favorite: His campaign raised a record $32 million just in the month of January. The haul comes as the race morphs into a two-person fight and as both Hillary and Obama head into the chasm of a close Super Tuesday battle. Money, advertising and visibility will be key for the final days before ST, meaning that the cool 32 mil is a welcome benefit for Obama. While the fact that most of Obama’s previous donors had yet to max out on their limits for the campaign played a part, there is no question that Obama’s momentum coming out of SC and the Ted Kennedy endorsement pushed him over the edge at the end of the month. Campaign manager Plouffe expressed shock at the amount, implying that it was well above their target figure calculated in mid-January.
  • With Edwards out of the race, the rush is on for the Obama and Clinton campaigns to lure as many of JRE’s old and angry supporters to their side as they can before Super Tuesday. The situation remains in flux while Edwards himself waits to endorse a candidate in the race - something that isn’t expected to happen until at least Monday. Conventional wisdom has most of the freshly uncommitted Dems flocking to Obama, in search of yet another anti-Hillary candidate. But looking at a recent Yahoo poll that asked supporters of each of the major candidate who would be their second choice, Edwards backers actually favored Hillary by a wide margin over Obama. That doesn’t make sense, so it’s still safe to look at this as a question of how many will go to Obama and how many will stay out of it entirely, not if they’ll go to Clinton.
  • In a last-minute change of heart, Romney has decided to personally fund a major Super Tuesday TV ad buy starting immediately, digging into his own fortune as the donated coffers of his campaign sit bare. Reports from before the debate yesterday had the Romney camp ruling against purchasing expensive TV spots in big states like New York or California, opting instead to go with ground visibility and short spots in smaller states. But TV is back on the table today. California and several Midwestern states are the targets of the ad buy, with a host of different and varied spots set to hit the airwaves. Word is that several are extremely negative against McCain…
Sphere: Related Content