Mother Jones: This Is Why Sanders Can Stay in the Race Until the Bitter End
This Is Why Sanders Can Stay in the Race Until the Bitter End
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/why-bernie-sanders-not-dropping-out
The delegate math is daunting for Bernie Sanders. As numbers-cruncher Nate Silver explained last week, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont has to win handily big statesmost notably New York and Californiain order to close his gap with Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegate count, and then he must convince hundreds of superdelegates to back him.
But Sanders will be able to fight to the very end, for one simple reason: He has a lot of money. Each month this year, the Sanders campaign has raised more money than the last. In January, he hauled in $20 million; in February, $43.5 million; and in March, $44 million. (Clinton raised $29.5 million in March.) And while Sanders is spending that money at a fast clip, he is collecting enough to sustain the high burn rate. The campaign spent $50 million in February yet ended the month with more cash in the bank ($17.2 million) than at the beginning of the month ($14.7 million). There is no complete data available yet for March.
Candidates usually have much less cash than the Sanders campaign has in the bank when they end their White House bids. Clinton concluded her first presidential campaign in June 2008 with virtually no money. She had $26,046,667 in the bank, but owed $25,201,722 in debt.
Other failed candidates usually are close to tapped outor they owe moneywhen they pull the plug. When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry ended his second presidential bid last fall, he had about $45,000 in his campaign bank account. Mike Huckabee, the last candidate to fall to John McCain in the 2008 primaries, had $79,762 in his coffers after he ended that run.