Lump of Fundraising

If you look at the fundraising in the Democratic race, you'll see that Hillary Clinton has put together an amazing organization that's shattering all the records except . . . the ones being created by Barack Obama. In short, both contenders are raising tons of money. This sort of thing, which you see time and again, ought to debunk the "lump of fundraising" fallacy that seems to underwrite much establishmentarian loathing of contested primaries. It's true that if you look at all this money and simply assume it would be out there even if there were no contest happening, that it looks like a lot of cash being burned in a negative-sum intra-party fight. In the real world, though, it's the contests that drive the fundraising.