Hi, this is Janine in San Diego, California, washing mountains of very dirty laundry after my family's epic trip to Yosemite National Park, where we were drenched on the mist trail and lower Yosemite Falls, climbed to Glacier Point in the Eagle Peak and to the very top of Half Dome.

This broadcast was recorded at. Wow! 106 pm on Monday, July 17th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably be done with the laundry. However, I will never forget all the memories we made on the trail and those gorgeous views at Yosemite National Park. Enjoy the show!

I love this twist on the mountain top time stamp, which is the laundry after the mountain top times stamp.

I'm sure Yosemite was lovely, but I feel you on that post-trip laundry mountain that you always have to climb when you get back. It's pretty daunting.

I did a lot of laundry myself over the weekend, and I will just say that the podcast is very good to listen to while cleaning.

Oh, there you go. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast on Susan Davis, I cover politics. I'm Tia Marquit, I cover the White House.

And I'm Dominic Amantiner, our senior political editor and correspondent.

And President Biden is starting his reelection campaign with tens of millions of dollars in the bank so far considerably outpacing the crowded field of Republican rivals.

Tia, how much did President Biden raise and put it in perspective compared to past incumbents?

Yeah, so President Biden, and we should say that this is combined with the Democratic National Committee and their joint fundraising committees, and that is the privilege of in-compancy, is that the party is your party.

He raised $72 million, which is a lot of money, but it turns out it's actually less than the second quarter of the off-year fundraising of both former President Obama and former President Trump.

Of course, it's not completely apples to apples because Biden got in late in April.

Obama had gotten in early in April, and of course, former President Trump was running for President for reelection basically from the day of his inauguration in 2017.

Well, he has the advantage, though, of being able to wait around until a general election while a lot of the Republicans who are running are having to spend all this money to wage a primary raise.

Yeah, exactly. And Biden's campaign has definitely pointed that out.

But he's not running against Trump 2019 or Obama 2011. He's running against the existing field, which is currently beating each other up, and some of whom are not posting stellar numbers.

Dominica, we talk a lot about small donors versus big donors. Both matter a lot in politics. Can you sort of illuminate the distinction and why they matter?

Yeah, when we talk about small dollar donors, we're talking about the ones who give less than $200 in a single giving.

So that's important because that indicates a degree of grassroots support.

If you're going hunting for this in FEC data, like I was, you're looking at the difference between itemized and unitomized donations.

The unitomized are the people who are giving less than $200 per donation.

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