(mic.com) — It is a truth universally acknowledged, as a campaign trail Jane Austen might have written, that a candidate lacking a small fortune early must be destined to want for support later on. Perhaps it is so — one of the more effective ways to predict winners and losers in election season is to compare the contestants’ bankrolls. Fundraising, more than anything else, measurable or not, is the political pundit’s North Star.
For Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the money game is scheduled to be a losing one. He does not, like Hillary Clinton, have a super PAC dedicated to collecting unlimited sums of cash and putting them to use on his behalf. Even as Sanders does well with traditional fundraising, Clinton’s operation and haul remain light-years ahead. If dollars decide this primary fight, Sanders will finish second- or even third-best.
Those are the caveats. Here is the argument: Sanders and Clinton are a whole lot closer than the conventional wisdom suggests. By definition, a wave is destined to crest and break. But the tides, belonging to an altogether more complicated science, promise new swells to follow the broken ones. The next rush could be considerably stronger, or it could flatten out. Here are five indicators suggesting the political currents are running in Sanders’ favor: