Not to be outdone by his top Republican rival, Barack Obama's campaign announced that he'd raised more than $42 million for the last quarter of 2011, compared with the $24 million Mitt Romney raised to outdo his competitors in the Republican primary field. Obama also raised $26 million for the Democratic National Committee, for a combined quarterly take of $68 million.  Making the announcement the day after Romney (campaign manager Jim Messina put out the numbers in a YouTube video Thursday morning) must have felt good. They'll cycle through Thursday's news with comparisons to Romney like ours above. But perhaps the campaign would have released the figures a day earlier if they hadn't been so busy editing together that Messina video. The frequent quick cuts between the close up and medium shot as Messina bashed Republicans for their corporate fund-raising started to give us a bit of motion sickness. Check it out:

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Adam Martin