NYT: Early ’08 Fund-Raising Has Clear Blue Tint

[pigpickle]

For anyone looking for a sign of the health of the Democratic Party going into the 2008 presidential campaign, it came Wednesday with the last of the fund-raising figures reported by the major presidential candidates.

With the $25 million reported by Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, closing in on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s $26 million, the Democratic presidential candidates collectively outperformed the Republicans, and by a substantial amount: Democrats raised a total of about $78 million, compared with just over $51 million by their rivals, according to preliminary first-quarter figures provided by the campaigns.

That is remarkable because Republicans have historically proved better at collecting contributions. In every presidential primary season since 1976, the top fund-raiser was a Republican.

The new numbers offered what even Republicans described as measurable evidence that Democrats today are more confident about their prospects of winning back the White House, and — not typically for their party — satisfied with their candidates. That enthusiasm gap is emerging as one of the early dynamics of the 2008 campaign.

“The Democrats seem to have a lot more hunger for the White House right now than we do,” said Scott Reed, who managed the presidential campaign of Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, in 1996. “Part of it on the Republican side may be Bush fatigue. But clearly, the Republicans are going to need to get it together on finances if we are going to compete with the likes of Obama or Hillary Clinton. It’s a concern.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/us/politics/05assess.html?hp