Tomorrow, the third quarter of 2003 fundraising for presidential candidates will come to an end. Campaign finance reports from the candidates will be due two weeks later, but the campaigns with a story to tell will release their total “take” before then. The nation’s leading reporters predictably will concentrate on the dollar signs (did Dean raise more than $15 million? did Bush cross the $80 million threshold? what about Clark?), and will pronounce Democratic candidates winners or losers because of how much (or little) they collected. This will all feed into an analysis about how well that sets candidate X up to defy President Bush’s special interest fundraising juggernaut.