Oldie but Goodie meme: The Bush Warchest

[a_random_joel]

Remember way back when all the talking heads and pundits were constantly talking about how "Bush warchest?"

Whatever happened to that one? Kind of faded, didn't it...

Like those Saddam body doubles.

[Julien Sorel]

1. Bush has outspent Kerry by quite a bit.

But advertising can only do so much, particularly when it is so one dimensional. Ultimately, Bush's negative ads blew back at him when Kerry showed up at the debates and the public saw a different man than they had seen in Bush's commercials and rhetoric.

One thing, and one thing only, I will give the Dean campaign credit for, is the grassroots fundraising. Some of the Deanites were predicting Dean would raise $600 million and the like in a general election, which was absurd, but Kerry did end up raising enough money to compete with Bush, much of it using the plan set up by Dean's campaign, from what I can tell.

I also think the Republicans blew it on money to a certain extent. Bush focused on fat cat money, when traditionally Republicans clean the Democrats' clocks on grassroots fundraising. Perhaps Bush felt he had plenty of $$, and didn't want to ruffle the feathers of his wealthy donors, so he low-keyed the grassroots stuff. But he probably left a fair chunk of change on the table.