If you wondered whether the least popular vice president in American history would be able to raise enough money to wage an effective smear campaign against Donald Trump, well, wonder no more.

As soon as her bitterly clinging boss bowed to the twin pressures of Nancy Pelosi’s stiletto and George Clooney’s op-ed, the fundraising floodgates opened up. Indeed, Harris took in some $81 million in the 24 hours immediately after Joe Biden dropped out.

“The massive haul,” reports the AP, “which includes money raised across the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees, represents the largest 24-hour sum reported by either side in the 2024 campaign. Harris’ campaign said it was the largest single-day total in U.S. history.”

The New York Times adds these particulars: “Her campaign said that 888,000 donors had contributed in her first day, 60 percent of whom were making their first contribution of the 2024 contest. The campaign signed up 43,000 of those donors to make recurring donations, it said.”

In the three days since she became the presumptive nominee, she has raked in almost $230 million.

What we have here, then, is a return to the status quo — which is Democrat domination of fundraising. According to OpenSecrets, the Democrat Party has so far raised nearly $800 million this cycle, while the Republicans have raised just over $600 million. That might not seem like an insurmountable difference, but when we consider that more than 155 million votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election, and that it was decided by just 43,000 votes in three swing states — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — a few million dollars of walking-around money here and there can make all the difference. Indeed, it can ensure that all the nursing homes in, say, Democrat-controlled Milwaukee have a mail-in ballot rate of 95% or so. If you catch my drift.

Put another way: Money is speech. And more money going to the Democrats means more attack ads against Donald Trump in the decisive swing states.

This fundraising gap makes perfect sense, too, because even the hard-left Nation now admits that the Democrats have become The Party of the Rich: “65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,00 per year,” and “the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress.”

Luckily for Republicans, they do have the world’s richest man on their side — at least nominally so. Last week, we reported, via The Wall Street Journal, that Musk has said he’s committing some $45 million per month to a new pro-Trump super PAC. Since that time, though, Musk has backpedaled a bit. As Fox Business reports, he’s now denying reports about that $45 million number, instead telling Jordan Peterson via podcast, “What’s been reported in the media is simply not true. I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump.”

Musk added on X, “I am making some donations to America PAC, but at a much lower level and the key values of the PAC are supporting a meritocracy & individual freedom. Republicans are mostly, but not entirely, on the side of merit & freedom.”

We’re not sure what, exactly, “a much lower level” means, but we’ll take it. Because this Musk-supported PAC focuses on the all-important ground game: registering voters and getting out the vote in the swing states.

In addition to Musk’s public support of the Republican Party, he might also be responsible for a coattail effect within the tech sector. As The New York Post reports, “The Wall Street effort to support Harris pits the bankers against notable Silicon Valley billionaires like Tesla founder Elon Musk and venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and David Sacks who have pledged their support the other way and endorsed the Trump-Vance ticket.”

Perhaps a growing number of tech entrepreneurs now understand that Donald Trump’s administration was friendlier to their business-building efforts than the regulatory regime of Joe Biden.

Given Big Tech’s recent history of censorship and outright hostility toward the Republican Party, this would be a welcome development.