Trump's capacity to dominate the daily conversation of the race -- via wall-to-wall appearances on cable TV and a barrage of tweets sent at all hours of the day -- has been well documented. YOU MEDIA TYPES DID THIS, screams anyone who doesn't want Trump to be the nominee, which is accurately defined as roughly seven in 10 Republicans at the moment. If the media didn't give Trump a daily platform to sound off, he'd a) have to spend much more of his money and b) be less successful (for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me).

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Regardless of how much you blame the media for the rise of Trump -- options are "a lot" or "totally" -- you have to give Trump a lot of credit for grasping early on that he didn't need to blanket the Iowa or New Hampshire airwaves with costly ads. Instead, he just sent tweets. Or called into "Morning Joe."

Like it or not, Trump has redefined what money -- or, more specifically, fundraising -- means in the context of political campaigns. The number of Twitter followers you have may wind up being more important in this campaign (and future ones?) than the number of ad points you have on the air at any given time. And, the long-held practice of measuring a candidate's viability on how much money he or she is raising may be out the window too.