Former Vice President Joe Biden is beginning his general election push in a nearly insurmountable financial deficit behind President Trump.
Biden and the Democratic Party are lagging behind the president’s reelection effort by nearly $187 million, according to The New York Times. Even after Biden enjoyed a record fundraising haul in March, the presumptive Democratic nominee would need to net close to $1 million a day for the rest of the campaign cycle to close the gap with Trump.
The Trump campaign, its affiliates, and the Republican Party have been building a massive campaign war chest for the past three years, building up a reserve of cash that will be more important now that the coronavirus has stalled massive swaths of the U.S. economy.
“Trump’s clear lane is one of the huge benefits of incumbency, and he has used that advantage to turn the screws on every possible donor and execute a massive digital fund-raising effort,” Democratic strategist Jim Margolis said. “So, yes, there will be a fund-raising imbalance, but I think Biden will have enough money to run a good campaign.”
Biden raised $33 million in the first half of March, but fundraising slipped after states began issuing stay-at-home orders and uncertainty around the virus began hitting markets. Still, Biden was buoyed by clinching a large delegate lead in Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, and his campaign brought in $46.7 million in March, the most of any month of the campaign.
The coronavirus has hampered both campaigns’ ability to fundraise, a development that likely works in Trump’s favor as he can tap into vast cash reserves that Biden cannot. The Trump campaign effort began the month of April with $244 million in cash on hand, well over four times more than the $57 million readily available to Biden and the Democratic National Committee, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Trump and the R.N.C. are on track to have $400 million cash on hand by July 4, an incredibly strong financial position in this political environment,” Chamber of Commerce senior political strategist Scott W. Reed said after the Trump campaign announced that its reelection effort brought in $212 million in the first three months of 2020.
Biden’s campaign has switched to a virtual fundraising format to court the party’s largest donors. The presidential candidate has been using the online platform Zoom to speak to wealthy patrons that may have to serve as the backbone to his campaign as middle-class donors hold their money amid the pandemic.
Former Clinton campaign advisor Robby Mook said that the Biden’s financial disadvantage is not as large a problem as the cash figures might suggest. Mook said the election landscape is much more favorable to Democrats now than it was for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Time is a much more precious resource than money, and he just had a lot of time handed over to him,” Mook said, noting that Biden has been able to shore up the Democratic nomination months earlier than Clinton because Sanders in 2016 did not cede the nomination to Clinton until the convention.
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