Hillary Is Out Of Money

It's not only that Hillary Clinton is running a one-night-only concert with Elton John in New York on April 9, just 13 days before the Pennsylvania primary. It's not that she's doing a swing through California the week before. I think it's that she's doing a partial low-dollar event at the Wilshire Theater the night of April 3, which sounds like a town hall meeting to me.

This is the kind of event you have in a state where you're campaigning. I suppose it's possible that it was scheduled earlier on the expectation that the nomination would be hers by this time. But it doesn't make any sense to do it now. Pennsylvania would be three weeks out by that point, and I would have expected both candidates to park themselves there. You don't go off the campaign trail to raise money unless you REALLY need it. And in addition, you don't go off the campaign trail to have a low-dollar event unless all your high-dollar donors are maxed out. Forget about going to the convention if there's no funda to get there. If Clinton can't financially compete in states where she doesn't have a built-in advantage, like Indiana and North Carolina, she'll wind up even further behind on pledged delegates and the popular vote. There's no path to the nomination in that case.

In the pre-Internet age, this race would already be over because Clinton wouldn't have the money to continue. Because she waited so damn long to even ask her supporters to contribute online, she might be in the same situation. It's interesting and perhaps fitting that the fact that Clinton doesn't believe in bottom-up democracy could lead to her downfall.