Money can't buy Mitt love

So Mitt Romney outraised President Obama again in July, $101 million to $75 million. That $26 million gap is large, but it's $9 million less than last month, when Romney outraised Obama by a $106 million to $71 million margin.

We don't know yet how much the president's reelection campaign spent in July, but Romneyland says their cash on hand is $186 million, up $26 million from the $160 million they claimed in June. Subtract that $26 million growth in cash-on-hand from Romney's $101 million fundraising total and you get Romney's total spending for July: $75 million. For all the talk of the torrid pace of campaign spending by the Obama campaign, that's actually more than the roughly $71 million Obama spent in June. Yet despite rivaling'if not exceeding'the Obama campaign in total spending, Romney ended July very much upside down when it comes to the horserace, particularly in swing states, where Obama has built a strong edge.

Romney's biggest problem is that no matter how much money he spends, he can't change the fact that he's Mitt Romney. Not only has he failed to effectively rebut criticisms of his economic and business records, he's remains as personally unlikeable as ever. If money could fix those problems, they'd have been fixed long ago.

Making matters worse (for Mitt), it turns out that the type of money Romney is raising is less useful than the type of money President Obama is raising. The reason for this is the fundraising totals announced by Romney and Obama include fundraising not just for their campaigns but also for their party committees. They can coordinate up to $21 million in spending with their party committees, but the rest needs to be managed by an independent expenditure committee with which they cannot legally coordinate. Moreover, that independent expenditure committee cannot take advantage of lower ad rates available to candidates.

Donors can only give up to $5,000 directly to Romney's campaign, but they can give up to $75,000 to the campaign plus the party committees. Romney's fundraising advantage over Obama comes entirely from these mega donations. In June, for example, Romney raised just $33 million of his $106 million directly for his campaign'$73 million went to Republican Party committees. Obama, meanwhile, raised $46 million of his $71 million total directly for his campaign.

Neither Obama nor Romney have said exactly how much each committee raised in July, but based on last month's totals, I would guess that Obama raised nearly $50 million directly for his campaign and Romney raised about $37 or $38 million. The bottom line is that in July, Romney did outraise Obama'but it's actually not as bad a situation as the $26 million gap would suggest.

Moreover, President Obama actually grew his fundraising total by $4 million while Romney's shrank by $5 million. The reason: Obama is fundraising from a bigger pool of smaller donors. As we get closer to the election, his fundraising will accelerate. Romney's fundraising, on the other hand, will continue to decelerate unless he somehow figures out how to excite small donors. For a guy like Mitt Romney, that's going to be very difficult, especially as it becomes more and more clear that President Obama is the odds-on favorite to win in November.