A whole lot of campaigns are run for publicity and marketing of a personality, to create the wealth and power that comes from the resulting celebrity and positions on TV or in think tanks and on boards, not to win, a few just seem to like the lifestyle and attention of getting to run every 4 years, hotels, meals, travel, adulation, new customers for your newsletters and columns.
When everything is paid for by fans, some take it, a lot of climbers would love to be able to use millions of free dollars to build a public persona and create a media future for themselves.
I worked on double digits of campaigns for various offices in my lifetime.
I have never heard a candidate start out by saying “we are not planning on winning this”.
Not once.
If we did not win the campaign failed.
Everyone knew it.
All claims to the contrary were just spinning.
To continue my post—I did work for a Congressional candidate who lost but later had a solid career in broadcasting.
Looking back you could try to claim that he didn’t care if he won or lost since it launched his career.
I was there as a close advisor—and I will tell you that loss hurt—hard.
His plan was to go to Congress.
What happened later was not part of any plan.