Notice that Dubbaya raised the most money ever when he was campaigning. Now everyone knows that politicians are just puppets who take kickbacks from different groups of people in order to get votes. The Democrats are backed by environmentalists and unions, republicans are backed by the oil companies.
just a side note, Bush's personal campaign raised the exact same amount of money as Gore. There is a system in place whereby the two major parties' presidential candidates receive federal funding, however in exchange they both agree to raise only a certain amount of money, thus resulting in both candidates having the exact same amount of money. This system has been in place since (i think) the kennedy/nixon election (give or take a couple years) and every major presidential candidate since then has agreed to participate. Now as for independent ads and expenditures (which are technically unlimited) I don't know. More pacs may have run ads or other whatnot for bush than gore, but that is a completely different issue.

And political parties aren't run based on money, they're based on power. Almost no politicians would take a position that they knew to be disliked by a majority of people which is why the political parties are so sharply divided over valence issues (such as abortion, drugs, etc.) They never take the middle ground, they are always on the extreme ends pushing people towards the extremes. That way they have people who will blindly follow because they only care about a few valence issues and thus get more votes and remain in power.