If Clinton raises a lot more money than Trump, will she send cash downballot?

[Virginiá]

I'm not asking in theory, but rather I am curious if there is maybe a precedent for presidential candidates diverting extra money to other critical races? If she raises hundreds of millions more than Trump, then she won't necessarily have to spend as much on her campaign, right? She could seriously help other races downballot with even a fraction of that extra money.

I'm sure Clinton understands that her ability to advance her agenda relies on having as many Democrats as possible in Congress, so I would think that she would do whatever she can for them. State legislative races could benefit quite a bit from this as well.

Thoughts?

[Virginiá]

I'd imagine it would depend on the state of the presidential race.

I have a hard time seeing Trump taking the lead for any sustained amount of time, so my thoughts come down to a situation where Clinton is leading with a similar RCP average as right now, and over a hundred million dollars that she doesn't even need to spend.

The disaster that is Trump's campaign really does lend credence to the prediction that he will come up massively short in his fundraising, so I have been wondering about what she might do with her extra campaign cash. That kind of money could do wonders in state/House elections.

[Virginiá]

ffs jfern just go away. Seriously, I'd rather swim through the East River with a dirty diaper strapped to my head than solicit your opinion on anything related to Clinton.

It would be smart, but I think it's more likely that she'll either 1) pile cash on thick in the form of a bombardment of ads, or most likely 2) stash it away until the very end of the campaign in case something catastrophic happens.

If this happens it'll happen in, like, October.  It's pretty much human nature to be illogically risk-averse here.

October as in, if she spends downballot, it would be in October? If so, that would make sense. If she was up very comfortably at that point, she could spread the wealth around with little worry.

If she does end up with a huge surplus and decides to spend more of it on her campaign, I'd at least hope she tries to expand the map rather than fortify existing targets. It wouldn't be a total left down, as the better she performs, the better downballot candidates will likely fare, albeit probably less so than if she had provided them with cash for their campaigns.

[Virginiá]

Pathetic how no one addresses the actual point, but engages in personal attacks instead. Hillary hacks can't stand to have their sh**tty candidate criticized.

First off, for future reference, I don't want your opinion on anything Clinton-related. We all know where you stand in regards to Hillary.

Second, I know full well about the Victory Fund issues. Of course she is using it to collect more money. But the thing is, do you expect money going to say, the victory fund via Montana's Democratic party, to actually stay and be used in Montana? Why? What strategic use is Montana on a national scale? The DNC wants to strategically distribute money to state parties where it will actually make a difference in national / Congressional elections. That means places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and so on, where state parties need to control the legislature for redistricting. The DNC can decide when and where to appropriate it. If I were them, I would do that too.

Finally, the reason I don't care about your link is because my question was specifically about what she would do with extra money that she has no use for - That makes whatever is going on with the victory fund pointless to this discussion. As stated before, just because money sent to state parties for the victory fund doesn't stay in the states, does not mean it won't eventually be used in other, more critical states.

Now, please. Just stop.

[Virginiá]

The DNC spent it on her campaign in a contested primary. It was an outrageous circumventing of campaign finance laws. Hillary hacks might not care, but sh**t like this makes many Bernie people be never Hillary. We are done with the corruption.

Yeah, that does suck.

On another note - You've managed to turn yet another thread into a Clinton bashing trash pit. Thanks. Go away please.

[Virginiá]

If Hillary really wanted to help down ballot candidates, wouldn't she be better off just trying to increase her own margins in more states?  Like say... Arizona.  Hillary probably isn't going to win there, but if she increases her turnout and makes it competitive, that would probably help people like Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema.

Yes, I was discussing ticket splitting in another thread actually. If 2016 is even remotely like 2012 in terms of ticket-splitting (which it seems to be, as polarization is arguably worse than in 2012), then Clinton's winning margins state-to-state will boost downballot Democratic candidates as well.

However, it has been shown that money is increasingly effective the further downballot you go. The reason is that people are less informed about other races. So extra money can help define your party's candidates better, or help define the opposition's. In a way, that is better than money spent on the presidential candidate in places where they are already so well defined that millions of dollars eventually fails to move the needle.

I just hope her campaign is smart about this and actually does work on rebuilding the party. Democrats really need to take back the state governments in the rust belt, among others.

[Virginiá]

No. The Victory Fund shenanigans are an indicator of how this is going to be handled. Using struggling state parties as a vehicle to legally launder 99% of the money into the national party while giving them virtually nothing in return is completely at odds with what the DNC, the Clinton campaign and Clinton herself have been saying. Supposedly, Clinton plans to pursue a 50-state strategy. You can't do that without proper funding of state parties, and you certainly can't do it by pouring money into them a month or two before the election; too damn late. At first I thought they might redistribute some of the Victory Fund money back to select states in ways that made sense (since the way in which it is raised is uniform from state to state; Vermont doesn't need $1m to the same degree that Arizona does), but there is no evidence of that happening.

At best, she'll pump money into a few battleground states that won't necessarily need it but might be lagging her national poll numbers in internal polling. Coattails are not how you rebuild state parties and if things are as dire for the GOP as it is in this scenario, then there is going to be a large amount of redundancy in trying to max out her margins. All of these states that might not seem to matter in Senate contests and for the Presidency...yeah, they don't matter if you don't care about both federal and party policy being viable nationally. Medicaid expansion, unions, abortions...the list goes on and on. The President is a literal figurehead with a state-level situation like the one we have today.

This seems so incompetent of them, though. It's undeniable how badly Democrats have been blown out in the states, so how could they not be investing to increase their numbers? This is like a person getting into a car crash that totals their car, then having it towed home and never fixing it because they need money for a new big screen TV. It just doesn't make sense.