Who's Going To Fund Trump's Campaign?

After last night, Donald Trump is the "presumptive" presidential nominee for the GOP. What that means is that the Republican party is now effectively operating under Pottery Barn rules: You broke it, you bought it, Trump supporters. Now it's your job to get him elected. In theory, that shouldn't be hard, because Trump supporters have been crowing about the record number of votes Trump's accumulated in the primary. Trump and his supporters have been long been speculating about his sway with a "silent majority" that's going to sweep him into office in November.

Suffice to say, that Trump's argument for winning in November might be a tad over-simplified. Typically, money is the fuel that fires modern campaigns, and according to this metric, Trump is unlikely to be competitive. For one thing, fundraising is a responsibility that doesn't look like it's going to be widely shared by the entire GOP coalition. Aside from the Never Trump movement among grassroots voters, Trump's polarizing path to victory has alienated a very necessary constituency in the party: big donors. At the Washington Examiner, David Drucker has done some preliminary reporting on financing a Trump campaign and things aren't looking good:

The Republican donors who helped Mitt Romney raise $1 billion in 2012 have a target figure in mind for Donald Trump: zero. …

"There's a significant segment of large donors, and the donor community at large, that would need to see a fundamentally different approach to raise money, or give money, to Trump," Fred Malek, a veteran GOP bundler and the Republican Governors Association finance chairman, told the Washington Examiner.

For her part, Hillary Clinton has set an unprecedented fundraising goal of $2 billion and that seemingly absurd number may not be unrealistic. And without big donors, Trump will have to heavily rely on grassroots fundraising. Certainly Obama and Bernie Sanders have shown that can be a huge amount of money, but taken on its own it's probably not enough to stay competitive. Trump's hardcore supporters are certainly enthusiastic, so it's not impossible to conceive of a scenario where Trump rakes in big money from small dollar donations.