The vaunted Clinton money machine isn't as powerful as it's perceived. Reports the Washington Post:
Of the 770 people who collected checks for Obama’s 2012 reelection bid, just 52 have signed on as a "Hillblazer" bundler for Clinton or have held a fundraiser for her.
Consequently,
"I think you are going to see a groundswell [for Joe Biden]," said one prominent party funder.... "There is a lot of enthusiasm on the wires. This feels real."
Maybe, maybe not. What's not in doubt are two other perceptions — of candidate Clinton. The first, however unfair it might seem, is nonetheless quite real. A "well-connected" bundler frames it objectively: "People are saying, 'The press has always been out to get her, they are never going to let it go, she’s never going to get past it, what do I tell my friends?'" That's a perception that hangs on Hillary like a malevolent weight — even worse, like an immovable weight. Again, it may not be fair to the candidate — the criticism may be better directed at the press — but who in politics regards fairness as a rule of the game?
The second perception is much less impalpable: that of Hillary's political-management skills as a tangled sclerosis. In 2007-08 we watched Hillary plod along, committing unforced error after error, and showing little inclination for improvement. All was always well, according to Team Clinton, and Clinton herself seemed to actually believe it — until it was too late. Some watched in horror, while others looked on with glee (rarely have I grinned so often). The latter assemblage rather expected Hillary's poor management skills to stay put, and so far, her determination to do just that — wait until troubles morph into crises — has been brilliant. Here, for instance, is Maggie Haberman's lede in the Times:
Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she understood why people had questions about her decision to use only private email while she was secretary of state and that she took responsibility for that decision, a shift from her past remarks about an issue that has dogged her since shortly before she began her presidential campaign.
The Clinton camp will maintain that this is no "shift." But a shift it is, after Hillary's joking — joking, mind you — about the chief drag on her campaign. ("'What, like with a cloth or something?' she said to a Fox News reporter last week who had asked whether she had 'wiped,' or erased, her email server before turning it over to the F.B.I. recently.") And the shift is agonizingly belated.
It is also an opening for Joe Biden. And the money knows it.