Cash on hand

Pre-election posturing has candidates touting their "cash on
hand"; the contributions they have collected from who knows
who and who knows why.

The money will be used ultimately, to buy attack ads.

Candidates seem to benefit from their claims about the amount of money they have raised. We are supposed to fall in behind the front runners and then elect them.

I wonder, if instead of calling it cash on hand, they called it
negative campaign support, if their popularity would suffer
instead.

The emperor has no clothes.

The money they are able to raise is a bad thing, unless it is
to be used to raise the level of the discourse and the under-
standing of complex issues by everyday voters. It will not.