 After Beto O'Rourke launched his 2020 campaign, progressives everywhere were making fun of him, and I think rightly so, and this includes me, because it seemed as if he was going out of his way to avoid talking about policy substance. Like all he had to bring to the table was platitudes, no policy substance whatsoever. So I think that these are things that we're going to observe, because you have a plethora of candidates running with very specific policy ideas and bold policy proposals. So if you're going to announce a campaign and not bring anything new to the table, then I think that we're right to make fun of you, or at least us trying to clown on you for not being a serious candidate. It's justifiable. And throughout the course of the weekend, he kept posting videos on Twitter of him standing on tables of small coffee shops like a lunatic. And what you can see is small crowds of just a dozen or so people who didn't really seem that enthusiastic about his message. So we were getting a lot of indications that he was off to kind of a lackluster start and that maybe he had even face planted. However, we've got the first day fundraising totals in and really at this point in time, that's how you can kind of gauge how well he's doing. So let's look at the headlines and let's see how well he did within the first 24 hours. As NBC News reports, Beto O'Rourke raises 6.1 million on first day, topping Sanders and all other rivals. That sucks. Not something that I wanted to hear, not something that I was actually expecting, but nonetheless, it is what it is. And I'm not going to do to Beto what the mainstream media tries to do to Bernie Sanders and downplay all of his accomplishments. This is a big deal. I mean, this is a very successful launch for Beto O'Rourke. It pains me to admit that, but you know, facts are facts. He had a great first day. Now, we'll kind of stick a pin in this discussion and come back to that 6.1 million figure later. But for now, let's hear from Beto and what he has to say about his obviously successful launch. I say thank you to everyone who is helping to build the largest grassroots campaign this country has ever seen, funded completely by, powered completely by people, not PACs, not lobbyists, not corporations, and not special interests. It's one of the best ways to bring the country together to make sure that we are listening to one another and not that entrenchment of wealth and power and privilege that has defined so much of our politics from before. What message do you hope that number sends to your opponents, to your supporters? I hope this sends a message to everyone who's out there, who's looking for a different way to run a national race, a race that is premised on our faith in one another that's not going to take any PAC money that believes that the people of this country, through their individual donations of money, but also of support in knocking on doors or making phone calls or texting a friend about coming out to an event in Macomb County. Whatever it takes being there at this time that our democracy calls for the very best in all of us. And I think this is a great sign that in the first 24 hours this many people were able to come together. We're just going to know what your average contribution was. I don't know what our average contribution was. I just know that people contributed from every state in the union. As I get more details on how those contributions came in and the number in which they came in, I'll share that. But that top-line number of $6.1 million and the fact that it came from every state in the union was something I'm really grateful to be able to share. So he claims that he doesn't know what his average contribution is, which I find completely bizarre. Because if your campaign really is, quote, funded completely by, powered completely by people, not PACs, not lobbyists, not corporations and not special interests, then wouldn't you want to show us the receipts? Wouldn't you want to brag about how your average contribution is tiny? Or the number of individual contributors you were able to get on that first day? I mean, this is something that a grassroots candidate would want to brag about. You'd be excited about this. And he boasted in his announcement video about wanting to run the largest grassroots campaign in American history. So it's bizarre that you wouldn't know about something that should be interesting to you. Because if you're running a grassroots campaign, again, these are the things you want to look at. You'd want to look at these indicators, like average donation, number of donors, just so you can get a sense of how grassroots your campaign is. But I don't necessarily think he doesn't know. I think he doesn't want us to know. And that's what this is all really about. Because he kind of admitted, yeah, I'm playing coy with the numbers because I'm choosing to not share them right now. Can you release any of your fundraising figures over the past 40 hours? I can't right now. I apologize. You're right. I could. Let me answer the question. I choose not to. So that to me is incredibly strange. I don't get why you wouldn't want to share these numbers and brag about them. He certainly he can brag about the 6.1 million. You can't question his success there. However, if you want to validate the claim that you are a grassroots campaign, then you do need to disclose these numbers. Now, soon enough, we will see these numbers. These are all going to be available in future FAC reports. But for the most part, it's very strange that he doesn't want to reveal this information to us. And what that tells me, and again, I can only speculate because I don't know since I haven't seen the numbers, is that he actually didn't beat Bernie in terms of number of individual donors. And he probably has a relatively high average donation size, which means it would kind of undermine this grassroots appeal that he's currently trying to cultivate. But there have been other theories as to why he managed to raise so much money. One person actually said that when Beto O'Rourke finished the 2018 Senate race, he gave about 4.5 million dollars to the Texas Democratic Party, who then returned that money to him on the first day of his launch. However, as splinter journalist Libby Watson points out, there's absolutely zero evidence to back up this claim. And in fact, the FAC doesn't even have data after January 31st. So we just can't verify this and we shouldn't spread this misinformation around if we don't actually know that this is a fact and if we can't actually confirm it. But I think probably the most likely explanation is that former investment banker, Louis Sussman, who's on board with Beto, is probably bundling large contributions from elites. Or maybe it's a combination of both, to be fair. Maybe it's large and small donors and maybe it's not as small as he would have hoped, which is why he doesn't want to share the numbers. I mean, Beto does have the ability to raise a lot of money from small individual donations because when you look at the ratio of small to large donors, he actually does a relatively good job in comparison with people like Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris with 12%, 33% and 34% of total contributions coming from small donors, respectively. So it is sketchy that he doesn't want to reveal this information to us and we can only speculate and say, well, look, he probably just has a much higher average contribution size and less donors than Bernie, which is why he doesn't want to reveal it. But it's all speculation. And is it possible that he did in fact just best Bernie? Well, he certainly bested Bernie when it comes to the total. But did he get more grassroots support based on small individual donations? I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's possible. And it pains me to say that. But it is possible, regardless if we want to admit that or not. So the reason why I say that is because when I was talking with a centrist on Twitter who said that they donated to Beto, they said they donated $250. So if you have all of these centrists who are excited about Beto O'Rourke and who don't really want to substantially change the status quo and the way that Bernie Sanders does because they're comfortable and if they're comfortable, you can logically deduce from that that if they have a lot of money to burn, they're going to donate a lot of money to Beto O'Rourke especially knowing that they need to do better than Bernie Sanders since Bernie raised $6 million in his first day, technically $5.9 million. They now know what the bar is and maybe they went out of their way to try to beat Bernie Sanders. So it's definitely possible. And here's what I will say. We need to treat this as Bernie supporters. We need to treat this as if Beto O'Rourke did do better than Bernie even if that's not necessarily true. Because what he did regardless if we like it or not by raising $6.1 million regardless if it came from smaller large donors is he showed that he actually is a candidate who has potential to go the distance here. And when you see that Kamala Harris is kind of starting to lose momentum. Her crowds are getting smaller and smaller. I wouldn't be surprised if the establishment tried to throw all of their weight behind Beto soon. So I think that we need to take him seriously and even if we don't have the specifics we should just pretend as if his average contribution is comparable to Bernie and he has a comparable number of individual donors because we shouldn't be trying to pretend as if Bernie has this wrapped up. What this should do is it should motivate us as Sanders supporters to actually get out there and spread the word about Bernie. Canvas for him and phone bang for him. Don't become complacent and think, oh well you know Bernie he's still number one. Beto is not revealing this information because he's probably doing worse than Bernie in terms of small dollar donors. Don't even think that just pretend as if he's doing better than Bernie because we cannot underestimate any of our opponents. Just regardless if we don't have the specifics $6.1 million is a huge number and he may not have policy substance. He may be a goofball. But regardless we have to take him as a serious threat that he is in reality because this demonstrated that like it or not he had a successful launch. So regardless it honestly doesn't matter if the $6.1 million was raised from smaller big donors. The only thing that matters with regard to the specifics there is if he has street cred with regard to him being a grassroots funded campaign it seems as if this is more of an astroturf campaign because he's a conservative who has the support of elites. So that's probably the most likely scenario but I'm going to pretend as if it's not the most likely scenario. I'm going to pretend that he is a grassroots candidate like Bernie because we should treat him as that type of threat because that's exactly what the establishment will try to do regardless. And that number that $6.1 million means the media will unquestionably take him seriously. We'll take him at his word and we'll see in the future but for now we've just got to take this seriously because it seems like he's going to be a serious contender which again, strange because the dude is all fluff but Democratic voters went for Hillary Clinton before a large portion so it's not too surprising that they'd go for someone else who's completely vacuous. He treats me so unfairly.