June 21, 2016 02:41 PM UTC

Donald Trump is Barely Running a Presidential Campaign

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• by: Colorado Pols

Here’s why Republicans should be terrified that Donald Trump is their Presidential candidate…

If you’ve paid any attention at all to the news in the last year, you’ve probably seen dozens of headlines or ledes from reporters writing some variation of the story that Donald Trump is an absolute nightmare as the GOP candidate for President. Heck, you’ve probably seen a few versions of this post right here at Colorado Pols.

You don’t need a political science degree to understand that Trump is toxic to Republicans in a General Election, but despite the onslaught of negative news, Trump keeps marching along — which makes it difficult to gauge just how much you should really be worried about Trump if you are a card-carrying member of the GOP. But when you look past the pundits and the talk-shows and start digging into the indisputable facts on the ground…well, let’s just say that Republicans have every reason to be very nervous.

As Chris Cillizza writes for “The Fix,” Trump is barely even running a campaign at all:

Take Trump’s fundraising. He collected $3.1 million in the month of May and ended the month with $1.2 million in the bank. While Trump’s campaign released a statement Tuesday insisting that “the campaign’s fundraising has been incredible and we continue to see a tremendous outpouring of support for Mr. Trump and money to the Republican Party,” there’s little available evidence to suggest that’s accurate. After all, if Trump couldn’t raise any significant money in the month when he became the presumptive nominee why would June, where he has been beset by questions about his readiness to the GOP nominee, be better? [Colorado Pols note: Hillary Clinton raised $27 million in May]

Or staffing.  Trump jettisoned his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday. He still has no communications director. Put aside those senior positions and things look even worse. As of the end of May, Trump had 69 people on staff. Hillary Clinton had 685 people on staff…

…Trump is nowhere in the TV ad fight either.  He is currently spending $0 on TV ads in swing states. Clinton is spending $23 million.

Cillizza also points to a story in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that shows Republicans are out-staffed in the key state of Ohio by at least a 3-to-1 margin. This isn’t just bad news for Trump — it should be frightening for Republicans such as incumbent Sen. Rob Portman, who is facing a difficult re-election challenge from Democrat Ted Strickland.

And unless Ohio is an outlier, there are a lot of Colorado Republicans who are in big trouble.