The Update Desk: Who Loves Me, Baby (5)

This is the fifth update on my social experiment with the top ten 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and how they communicate with prospective supporters. (You can read the original post that started all of this silliness here, and prior updates here, here, here and here.)

And, if you do read the prior posts, or if you remember where we left off last week, you can tell that we've kind of hit a rut. Actually, not just a rut - a pit. A money pit, like the one you get when you buy a hose.  A giant, sucking money pit, that steals all of the conversation that could be happening around policy and what differentiates the candidates from each other, and instead forces them to talk only about money.

My money. My zip code's money. My state's money. The universe's money. All the money ever invented, and even money not yet invented. OK, I made those last ones up, but it felt like that's what was being requested.

Now, this was not unexpected - Monday was September 30th, the last day of Q3 fundraising, so the push was on, right up until 11:22 PM, which is when I received the last email of the quarter, from Joe Biden's campaign.  Beto O'Rourke gave up first, sending his last Q3 email to me at 7:17PM.

Speaking of Biden, I'm not sure whether he's running for president anymore, or building a legal defense fund. I say that at least half in jest but the tone of his emails since the noise about his son Hunter's lack of qualifications for pretty much everything started hitting the fan have been all about Trump attacking his family, and how he needs to fight back. Here's a sampling.

We’ll be honest: Joe won’t have as much cash as Trump when the fundraising deadline hits. But we’d love to tell Joe that his team rallied to his side after Trump's baseless attacks. It’d mean a lot. (Note: I received this wording at least three times)

We still need $190,000 before Monday’s end-of-quarter deadline to elect Joe Biden and fight back against (Trump's) lies. If we fall short, the consequences could be dire. 

Please, can we count on your help? Chip in now to defend Joe Biden.I think you get the drift here. We are not 'rallying to Joe's side' - he can start a GoFundMe page for that. We're trying to find someone to be president, for heaven's sake. Do better, Joe - do better.

To make life easier for me, I changed the counting methodology just a bit. The first few weeks, I tracked emails by subject, including general emails, and separately categorized how many direct requests for money were received. So, that made me categorize most emails twice. Going forward, an email that is primarily an ask for money is now counted as just that. General emails are those which discuss something in depth other than just "I need your cash."  Nothing nefarious here, just a bookkeeping change.

Here's this week's tally:

• 194 emails received, 35 more than last week;
• 171 (87.6%) were primarily requests for donations, compared to 82% last week;
• 21 emails were in the general category, focusing on things like surveys, new advertisements, new merchandise, what they've been doing on the campaign, and whatnot; and 
• 2 emails were directly related to the October 15th debate, mostly about making sure the candidate made the stage. 

Who asked for money the most? Elizabeth Warren; 96% of her emails were about money. Amy Klobuchar (92.8%), and Kamala Harris and Biden (92.3% each) also were in the top echelon. At the bottom of the pack was Cory Booker, with 72.2% direct requests for money. This is interesting; you might recall, he went public that if he didn't meet his fundraising goal, he'd get out of the race. Having exceeded the goal, Booker plans on being around for at least a while longer.

A couple of emails did touch on issues -- trying to solve childhood poverty was one, from Booker, and there were some references to the NRA and gun control, but nothing on the other big issues such as climate change or immigration.

Kamala Harris hit out at the potential for a Biden Super PAC, and at Tom Steyer for buying $12M in advertising, and she hit at Rudy Giuliani a couple of times, too, showing little fear in her goal to raise money.

Finally, to our email of the week, there was this one from Beto O'Rourke, with the subject line 'Miss Whiskers' - take a look.

Campaigns are really upping the ante when it comes to fundraising for the FEC deadline. Two candidates said this week they would drop out if they don’t meet their goals. Now, we’re not going to do that. But, I am starting to run out of ways to show how important this deadline is.

Maybe I could do a Facebook live stream with a kitten in hand and say, “You know, we wouldn’t want anything to happen to this kitten now would we… Send your $5 now and Miss Whiskers will be fine.”

To be clear, we’re not planning on harming any kittens. But we do need your help...

They're going to have to up their game to top that one next week.