Does Hillary Clinton have a small donor problem?

The presidential candidates this week released their fundraising numbers for the second quarter, and while this kind of thing is usually only of interest to the most strung-out political junkie, there are some revealing tidbits within the tidal wave of cash.

A lot of people like to focus on the number of small donors a candidates gets, the presumption being that small donors are better indicators of grassroots support than big donors. For instance, The New York Times on Thursday noted that Hillary Clinton got a smaller portion of her funds from small donors than the likes of Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, and presented it as evidence of a troubling weakness. The relative dearth of such donors "could represent a financial and strategic liability for Mrs. Clinton if she were to win the nomination," the paper wrote.

But here's a question: Is there a serious political analyst out there who thinks that Hillary Clinton's problem is that her campaign won't have enough money?

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If you ask a campaign why small donors are important, you quickly notice that the answers all emphasize not the donation itself, but what it represents or what it might lead to in the future. The first thing campaign operatives always say is, "It shows the incredible enthusiasm thousand of Americans have for this candidacy." Then they'll tell you how donors will turn into volunteers who can turn out other people to vote. Then they'll talk about the potential of a small donor who hasn't "maxed out" by giving the $2,700 limit, meaning the campaign can keep coming back to ask the donor for more money.

In other words, you might be able to turn the small donor into a big donor (the kind of donor you're supposed to pretend you don't like in the first place). But other than the symbolism of getting more donations from reg'lar folks, there's no reason the campaign wouldn't rather just have all the money up front.

And symbolism is what it is. Barack Obama's 2008 campaign is thought of as the most people-powered in recent history, with an unprecedented amount of citizen engagement. Which in many ways it was. But more people actually gave to Obama in 2012, when he was an incumbent running a somewhat less inspirational campaign. The Obama campaign reported that it received donations from 4.4 million people in 2012, up from 3.95 million in 2008.

That's a lot of people, without question. But if we divide that into the number of votes Obama got, we see that in 2008, one out of every 17.6 people who voted for Obama gave him a donation, which rose to one out of every 15 in 2012. Every candidate has many more supporters than donors, and it's the votes that count in the end.

The truth is that Obama raised huge amounts of money from everywhere — small donors, big donors, ordinary people, Wall Street, and every other source you could imagine. But the candidate powered by small donors is a certain type, and it isn't the type that usually wins. The candidates getting the highest proportion of their funds from small donors so far in this election are Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul. They all have a committed yet finite group of supporters, and a limited appeal to the big-money donors because of their less than overwhelming chances of winning.

So if you were a Republican running for president, which candidate would you rather be: Rand Paul, who got 65 percent of his funds from small donors, or Jeb Bush, who got a paltry 3 percent? Well, when you learn that Paul raised $6.9 million, while Bush raised $114 million, mostly through his super PAC, the answer seems pretty clear.

As for Hillary Clinton, I wouldn't worry too much about her. I have a feeling that she's going to have no trouble finding lots of donors, big and small. Consider that we really haven't yet seen much of a discussion about the possibility of electing the first woman president in American history. But presuming she's the nominee, as Election Day approaches and that possibility becomes real and urgent, don't be surprised if millions of women decide to write her a check for $50 or $100 — especially when eruptions of misogynistic bile come spewing from all manner of conservatives, which they most certainly will.

Hillary Clinton is going to have many challenges in her quest for the White House, but having enough money is probably not going to be one of them.