Money may influence certain blocks of voters more than others, and the parties may spend it differently. That still doesn't mean it's an unalloyed good that we pour so much money into it when it could be used on more productive efforts.

it's prisoners dilemma. if another party is outspending you, what do you do?

I don’t think many in either party are worried about small donations. But the concern from Dems is usually the unlimited donations as one billionaire could match the financial influence of millions of non-billionaires.

Kamala raised 2:1 from campaign contributions (limits: https://www.fec.gov/updates/fec-announces-2023-2024-campaign...), while the inverse was true for Trump.

Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/

In politics what’s pretty consistent is it’s almost always a debate about what’s to my advantage or not, masquerading as a principled argument.