Welcome to The Lid, your afternoon dose of the 2016 ethos… A trove of Hillary Clinton emails released last night indicated that, on at least two occasions, she became confused and frustrated by a fax machine, inadvertently revealing the single most universally relatable thing she has maybe ever said.
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’16 AT 30 THOUSAND
Money alone can’t buy candidates the presidential nomination, one of our of colleagues recently noted. But Hillary Clinton’s $45 million-plus haul in the first quarter of her campaign, along with how she raised the funds, will both help her better secure the Democratic nomination and position her well for the general election. For one, the $45 million is just cash to be used in the primary, not the general election. The Clinton campaign boasted it is the most ever raised for the primary, surpassing even President Obama’s fundraising total in the opening months of his re-election campaign in 2011. The significance is that supporters who have maxed out in the primary can still donate up to $2,700 towards Clinton’s general election fund down the road.
The other factor campaign aides were highlighting is that 91% of the donations were less than $100. That’s the kind of data that Clinton will point to as a manifestation of “grass-roots support.” -- even if rivals like Bernie Sanders brag of huge overall *number* of small donors. We don’t yet have the fundraising totals for her Democratic rivals, but Clinton very well may have somewhere around a 4-to-1 fundraising advantage in the primary. In other words, the first 81 days of her campaign have set her up well to surpass her campaign’s previously stated goal of raking in $100 million in 2015.
POPPING ON NBC POLITICS
- From one of us(!): Hillary Clinton posted a fundraising haul of $45 million in the first quarter of her candidacy.
- Donald Trump is at war with another company. This time, it’s Macy’s.
- Bobby Jindal is striking back at critics with his “tanned, rested, ready” line.
- President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba have struck a deal to open embassies in each other's capitals and re-establish diplomatic relations for the first time in half a century, NBC’s Halimah Abdullah writes.
- In today’s First Read, the team offers a useful way of looking at the crowded GOP field.
CAMPAIGN QUICK READS
Nancy Pelosi told John Harwood that Elizabeth Warren’s tough-on-big-banks talk is not “the consensus in our party.”
BUSH: He disclosed the names the donors to his education foundation, per the AP.
CHRISTIE: The New Republic suggests that his brand as a tough-talker has been stolen by Donald Trump.
He won the endorsement of Maine’s controversial GOP governor, Paul LePage.
HUCKABEE: The former Arkansas governor said Tuesday that calling same-sex marriage a “civil right” is an “insult to African-Americans.”
RUBIO: He’s written a letter (with Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, among others, signing on) asking for details of the Export-Import Bank’s liquidation plan, the Washington Examiner first reported.
FOR THE RECORD…
“You don’t put peas in guacamole.”
-- Jeb Bush’s response to a New York Times guacamole recipe that calls for peas.
TOMORROW’S SKED
Rand Paul campaigns in Iowa.
Hillary Clinton holds fundraisers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Rick Santorum keynotes the National Organization of Marriage gala in Washington, D.C.
