Only $11 million gain in cash on hand for Obama
While John McCain can only spend $84 million over the next two months after accepting that much from the public-financing system, it doesn’t cost him a dime to get it. The Obama campaign’s burn rate will be critical in determining whether he’s actually raising enough money to keep him ahead of McCain. If it costs him more than $20 million to raise that money, it’s essentially a wash — and the burn rate at Team O has been much higher than 30%. Their cash-on-hand numbers will probably tell a different story, as Obama would have to almost double McCain’s $84 million over the next two months just to stay even.
Byron York quotes the campaign as having $77 million cash on hand after August. That sounds impressive, but they had almost $66 million at the end of July. They had a burn rate of over 80%, which explains why the campaign may have seemed desperate to the New York Times. In order to make this decision work for Obama,
they have to do better than $66 million a month if they want to cover the cost of fundraising as well as make up for the deficit between the DNC and the RNC. -
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