As the Beatles sagely put it, a very long time ago: "I don't care too much for money / Money can't buy me love." Tom Steyer just found this out, for the second time. Or perhaps we should look to Silicon Valley, which adopted a slogan from the advertising industry a while back: "It doesn't matter how good your dog food advertising campaign is, if the dogs won't eat the dog food."

I glibly say all of this because Steyer just dropped over $200 million of his own money in his campaign to become governor of California -- which set a new record. But even after spending this mountain of cash, Steyer only came in third (which was not good enough for him to advance to the general election). This isn't Steyer's first rodeo, either -- in 2020 he spent almost $350 million on a failed bid for president.

Spending such vast sums of money used to be a fairly reliable way to win elections. If you flood the airwaves with your own ads to the point where viewers cannot miss them, then eventually some of them decide to vote for you. But it's never been a perfect correlation, and right now there is an increasing anti-billionaire mood in the country that makes it even tougher to just self-fund your way into high office.

Even just in California, Steyer joins a notable list of deep-pocket candidates that spent a whole bunch of money only to wind up losing, in the end:

Carly Fiorina, 2010 Senate race. Spent $6.5 million of her own money (most notably, on the "demon sheep" ad) and won the GOP nomination, but lost to Barbara Boxer. Later (in 2016), Fiorina ran for the Republican nomination for president, and also lost.

Meg Whitman, 2010 governor's race. Spent $144 million of her own money, won the GOP nomination, and then lost to Jerry Brown.

Al Checchi, 1998 governor's race. Spent $40 million of his own money, lost the Democratic nomination to Gray Davis.

Michael Huffington, 1994 Senate race. Spent $28 million of his own money, won the Republican nomination, but lost to Dianne Feinstein.

This phenomenon isn't just confined to California; there are plenty of other political wannabes who spent vast fortunes of their own money only to wind up being disappointed by the voters. Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon spring to mind. As does the reigning champion of setting large piles of money on fire, Michael Bloomberg, who dropped a cool billion dollars of his own money (spent in only 104 days!) on his 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. In the end, of course, Joe Biden beat him -- Bloomberg didn't even win a single state, even after that jaw-dropping spending spree.

Because sometimes the dogs just won't eat the dog food.

The San Jose Mercury News ran an article today written by Gary South, a Democratic strategist who has the experience of running four different gubernatorial campaigns in California, including the Gray Davis campaign that defeated Al Checchi. He also admits to running campaigns for self-financing candidates, both of whom lost their races.

He identifies three reasons why flooding the airwaves with ads doesn't always work out for rich candidates. First, voters are suspicious of very wealthy candidates because they couldn't possibly know what average voters lives are like. As he put it, the voters think to themselves: "If a candidate has tens of millions of dollars lying around to throw into a campaign where success is not guaranteed, how can he or she possibly understand the daily financial pressures in my family's life?" Which is a very good question.

Steyer tried to present himself as a modern-day Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- a wealthy man who would serve as a "traitor to his class" and champion the working-class folks while taking on the big banks and moneyed interest. This still left a lot of California voters unwilling to check the box for a billionaire.

The second reason South identifies is voters questioning why the candidate didn't start more modestly in politics (running for a smaller job and then working their way up), rather than going for the biggest job around for their first political foray. Voters ask themselves, South writes, "Who is this guy anyway? I've never heard of him, and now he wants me to vote for him for governor?" Again, that's a very good question. Steyer has been involved in California politics before, but only by backing ballot initiatives -- he's never actually held office before. So why would votes vault him into the highest office in the state, when he has no real experience?

And the third reason is a big one -- one that has become more and more potent over time. When flooded with ads, at some point voters not only tune out but actively get annoyed at the unceasing barrage on the airwaves. Voters think: "Oh, no, not him again! I'm so sick and tired of seeing his mug on TV every three minutes, I want to throw something at the screen."

I can personally attest to that one being true, and not just for Tom Steyer. Every campaign season there comes a point where exhaustion sets in and the incessant ads from the same source start to breed annoyance. At some point I start thinking: "Can Election Day please hurry up and arrive so I don't have to see the same damn ad over and over and over again?" This is completely separate from what the ads actually say -- I would probably feel this way even if the ads were for my ideal, perfect candidate. Because at some point, enough is enough.

It's a lesson worth contemplating as we head into the midterm election season. Sometimes spending an enormous amount of money doesn't equate to winning an enormous amount of votes. Because in the end, sometimes money can't buy voters' love -- no matter how much of it you spend.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant