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.

But only asking and answering these “horse-race” questions reporters will miss the newly emerging story of the presidential race:

More and more, fundraising is not only what campaigns do to raise money to deliver their message; leading Democrats are beginning to use money in politics as the message itself to define Bush as on the side of the special interests.

Clearly the campaigns are making a calculated judgment that the president’s fundraising and favor-giving makes him vulnerable.

The Evidence
“America works best when it works for all of us, but today Washington's not working for you. Corporations get tax breaks and ship jobs overseas. Drug companies block cheaper prescriptions. Millionaires' taxes keep going down while yours go up. Why? Because money and lobbyists run our government, and they own this White House.”
--Text of John Edwards’ television commercial

“The ideal of democracy is more powerful than money; yet today our democracy is threatened by a flood of special interest money pouring into our nation’s capital. …

“Under the Bush Administration, the largest corporations and the wealthiest individuals benefit from tax-cuts that are bankrupting the states and starving Social Security, Medicare, and our public schools. These tax cuts reward the largest political contributors at the expense of today's middle class, whose property taxes are skyrocketing.

“The flood of special interest money into Washington has transformed the system of American government from a government participated in by all to a government accessible to only a few. …

“It is a government of, by and for the special interests. The only way the American people are included in the process is that we are left to pay the bills. And the cost is high--to our economy, our environment, our children's schools, and our health care.”
--Howard Dean speech, September 23

“This Republican Administration holds secret meetings, sells out our environment, tolerates abuses and I say as clearly as I can, if I am President of the United States, the polluters will not rewrite our environmental laws because of campaign contributions.”
--John Kerry announcement speech, September 5

The Point
Democratic candidates are beginning to take on President Bush’s special interest fundraising, converting his strength into weakness. That is the real emerging story of this presidential fundraising season.