Democrats have poured more than $100m (£77m) in donations into Vice-President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, her campaign says.
The tally was boosted by what her team calls a record 24-hour period of fundraising - $81m raised.
During that timeframe, more than 888,000 people donated sums of up to $200 each, according to progressive donation platform ActBlue.
Donors who had pulled back their funding over concerns about Mr Biden’s age have said they now intend to resume their support for the party.
The surge in donations in the 24-hour period after Mr Biden quit the race was the single biggest for online contributions to Democrats since 2020, according to the New York Times.
It seems crazy to me too. The limits on spending for election campaigns are far smaller in some other countries, even after adjusting for population size.
Without passing judgment on whether it’s wise or not (though… clearly the current paradigm is not), the legal rationale is that the free speech implications of the US Constitution’s first amendment are extremely broad and permissive, even more so for explicitly political speech, and that money spent on political campaigns is effectively money spent to disseminate political speech. Restrictions therefore are very few, very light, and even where they exist they are very easy to effectively work around while remaining legal.