An excerpt from an article via Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the nomination in hand, Democrat John Kerry will focus over the next two months on finding enough cash to compete with President Bush's fund-raising machine -- although he will have plenty of help from Democratic and outside groups.
Kerry opens the general election campaign with the biggest financial disadvantatage in political history, a $100 million gap fed by Bush's record-smashing fund raising and his move to decline public funds and their accompanying spending limits.
So the newly minted Democratic nominee is launching a drive for cash, reaching out to financial supporters of his former rivals and embarking at the end of the month on a 20-city fund-raising tour of hot spots like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta and Chicago.
Kerry will be aided by the Democratic National Committee, which has $17 million to spend for him and an ambitious fund-raising plan, and a variety of independent groups dedicated to airing ads through the summer to help him counter an expected advertising onslaught from Bush.
The Massachusetts senator needs all the help he can get. At the end of January he had $2.1 million in the bank with debts of $7.2 million. Bush's campaign had $104 million in the bank with negligible debt and the likelihood of millions more rolling in by August.
Now, I'm definitely in the ABB (Anybody But Bush) camp. I'm not knocking John Kerry. However, I have a *massive* problem with campaign spending. Bush has over $100 million to spend, Kerry is estimated to end up with somewhere around $40 million. My question is this: how the hell many hungry people could be fed with that kind of money? I'd like to see a system wherein the "best man for the job" wins the race, not he who has the most fundage. What better things would you do with the campaign money?