Editor's note: The Trump campaign sent this statement along after publication: “All fundraising, large and small including our Victory effort, will continue through the end of the election."

FIX: The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Donald Trump was done doing fundraisers for the party (or himself). Hillary Clinton’s surrogates still have 41 fundraisers on the books between now and Election Day. How big a deal is that? And, just as important, why?

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Lisa Spies: This is a huge deal and it has both practical and symbolic impacts, both of which are bad. Practically, he is already overwhelmed by Hillary [Clinton] and her allies running way more TV ads, having a better data operation and having far more offices and organization on the ground. In fact, it sounds like she is doing so well that she’s shifting money away from her campaign to now help Democratic Senate and House candidates. Also, symbolically, it is incredibly demoralizing for Trump’s supporters to hear that he’s no longer out trying to win support. The only reason you admit that you are no longer asking for money is because either you are so well-funded that you don’t need money anymore, or because you don’t see any pathway to win. I don’t want responsibility for explaining Trump’s motivations (they make no sense to me), but if I was on his finance team, I wouldn’t know [how] to spin this to his supporters.

It is important to note that Hillary has a well-developed finance team and specifically surrogates that are doing events for her. Similar to Hillary’s traditional campaign, and in contrast to Trump, in 2012 around this time I could use Ambassador John Bolton to do targeted Jewish and pro-Israel fundraising events, and one of our big-league assets was Ann Romney, who we used to raise over $20 million through the “Women for Romney” effort. So while it isn’t unusual for the candidate to shift from fundraising events to political rallies in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign, the reason the Trump abandonment of fundraising events is such a big deal is because he doesn’t have an organization or surrogates to pick up the slack for him.

FIX: Assess Donald Trump’s fundraising. Has it been better, worse or about the same as you expected?

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Spies: I thought fundraising wouldn’t be a big deal for him, because he promised to self-fund his race, which is one of the reasons he won the primary. Early on, when Trump did his all-caps “I’m worth $10 billion” press release, it was realistic to think he would personally fund the $500 million that it would likely cost to run a competitive campaign. So it was a shock to me, and most Republicans, when he became the presumptive nominee and played games about whether he was going to use donor funds to pay himself back the around-$40 million that he loaned his campaign for the primary. Since the primary he has only put about $20 million more in, which has resulted in his getting overwhelmed with advertising. A lot of high-profile traditional Republican bundlers and donors have let him use their names on Trump Victory (joint fundraising committee with Republican National Committee) invitations, but those people haven’t been actually giving, bundling, and certainly not maxing out, to the effort.

Once Trump decided that he wasn’t going to keep his promise to self-fund, it’s shocking to me that he didn’t reach out to traditional Republican donors and make a serious effort to raise money. The road map for how to do it was created by Bush 43 and then Romney in 2012, so even though Trump was a year behind in building a network, he could have followed an established path, but instead he spent his time attacking Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, the Bush family and donors in general. That’s not the way to get those people’s networks to support you!

[Editor's note: Trump told ABC News on Wednesday he would spend more of his own money.]

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FIX: Is there anything a professional fundraiser like you can learn from Trump and his fundraising approach? If so, what?

Spies: The most important thing to learn is that if you’re working for a candidate [who] says they will self-finance, make sure they are wealthy enough to spend what is necessary to win. Of course, money doesn’t guarantee victory, but businessmen, and now governors, Rick Scott (Fla.), Rick Snyder (Mich.) and Pete Ricketts (Neb.), all figured out what they needed to spend and how to win. Trump obviously hasn’t.

In terms of fundraising tactics, where Trump has been good is that he’s the most successful hat salesman in history! Beyond that, when they finally ramped up low-dollar fundraising, that has been very good, but I hesitate to give him any credit here because usually you do that prospecting early on so then you can burn the house file (and net more money) close to the election. In this case, they didn’t do any low-dollar pieces during the primary or for a month after he became the nominee, so now while they are raising good low-dollar numbers, the cost of fundraising is astronomically high.

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FIX: Finish this sentence: “Donald Trump will raise a total of $_________ in this campaign.” Now, show your math and explain why.

Spies: Donald Trump will raise a total of $270 million for his campaign. As should have been clear from my previous answers, I’m not part of his fundraising efforts, so I’m just guessing here. But my starting assumption is that the Trump campaign has raised $218 million through September. Mitt Romney raised $104 million in October 2012, and I will give Trump 50 percent of that amount, which would be another $52 million in October, for a total of $270 million. That is compared to what I expect will be Hillary raising $550 million (which assumes another $105 million on top of the $445 million she has already raised), and about 50 percent less than the 2012 campaign effort.