| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. I give people very little political advice, but I will volunteer one thing: If you want to affect election outcomes, don't bother donating to presidential general-election campaigns. Whether you're a small donor or you max out or even if you have your own SuperPAC, the logic is the same. Money makes the least difference in these elections, and candidates have way more than they need. This is nicely illustrated by the latest ad by an anti-Trump group called the Lincoln Project. It's entirely devoted to attacking President Donald Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, on the grounds that working for Trump has made him fabulously wealthy. I suppose I've heard of ads attacking staffers before, although it's rare. Campaign professionals know that voters don't care about staff. What's striking about this ad is that it doesn't even pretend to be aimed at voters. There's no hint that there's anything corrupt about Parscale or the politician he works for. It's simply publicizing that he's rich thanks to his work for Trump. There's not a lot of mystery about it; the Lincoln Project folks are just messing with Trump, hoping that he'll take the bait and get angry with his campaign manager. Will it work? I have no idea. I doubt it cost all that much to make, so it's low-risk. And perhaps a secondary goal is to boost fundraising, since the group will get plenty of publicity if Trump does react to it. As Paul Waldman says, "Devising and producing videos with the sole purpose of making a candidate mad and fomenting discord inside his campaign is a bit of an odd strategy for political action, but if people are giving them money to do it, OK I guess." It reminds me of a more conventional ad the Lincoln Project ran a few weeks agao that got a fair amount of attention and earned the sponsors a rebuke from Trump. Everyone thought it was a good advertisement, from what I recall. But it's ancient history now. Even if the group had spent a lot on it, voters (and everyone else) would've already forgotten about it two weeks later. Early spending might matter in some situations — say, an election in which a candidate has low name recognition and wants to do well enough in early polls that he or she can attract resources later on. But not here. Money matters when voters have few cues helping them determine their vote — primary elections, when all the candidates share the same party label, and non-partisan elections where there are no party labels. Money can also help in low-visibility elections in which paid advertising makes up the bulk of the information available to voters. Presidential elections are the opposite: Partisan contests with tons of information available even to those who aren't paying much attention. Add to that diminishing returns as spending increases, and there's just very little bang for the marginal buck. The candidates will be happy to spend whatever they have, of course. Trump's campaign has already spent enormous sums; Biden's will too by the fall. But there's no reason for donors to play along, at least not if their motive for giving is to affect the outcome of the election. There are thousands and thousands of elections in the U.S., and money goes farther in pretty much all of them. 1. Rick Hasen on Trump's attacks on absentee voting. 2. Summer Marion at the Monkey Cage on Trump and the World Health Organization. 3. Matt Grossmann speaks with Christopher Devine and William Adler about vice presidents. 4. Ed Yong on the course of the pandemic in the U.S. 5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Conor Sen on what's different about this recession. 6. Jon Ralston on a frightened president. 7. And Sheera Frenkel, Ben Decker and Davey Alba on the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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