MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald said Tuesday that if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) continues to gain popularity, the Clinton campaign’s fundraising could dry up, causing problems similar to those it faced in 2008.
"They’ve relied a lot on these big donors who max out early on. [Once] they’ve given the federal maximum, you can’t go back to them and ask for more money," Seitz-Wald said about the Clinton camp. "So if this goes longer, there is a potential to run into finance issues. That happened to her in 2008."
In comparison, Sanders raises money predominately from small, individual donations, with more than 2.5 million donations from one million supporters in 2015. Seitz-Wald said that Sanders’s financing structure is less risky than Clinton’s and that his ability to bring in lots of money and excite big crowds is a sign that he could stay in the race "into April or possibly even later."
"Bernie Sanders, who has been getting these small donors, he can keep going back to them again and again without having to find as many new donors and that can keep him in the race for a long time," Seitz-Wald said.
Seitz-Wald also pointed out that voters’ unexpected enthusiasm for Sanders is causing the Clinton campaign to rethink its strategy, which has concentrated resources on the first primary state, Iowa, instead of spreading them out over several early states.
"Bernie Sanders already has staff in all 11 of the Super Tuesday states. Those are the states that vote on March 1. Hillary Clinton does not," Seitz-Wald said. "They have disproportionately put their resources in Iowa, even at the expense, a little bit, of New Hampshire."
"This is a new realization, a new world that the Clinton campaign is coming into, and you can expect them to start realigning resources and putting more staff in those later states," Seitz-Wald said.