Preaching to the choir

John McCain and the RNC are frustrated with the way Barack Obama has funded his campaign. They fear it is the death knell for publicly-funded campaigns. They distrust his donor list because of the extraordinary number of unidentified donors (those who have given under $200). I agree this campaign may mark a turning point in the way we fund presidential campaigns in the future, but I just can't see how Obama's fundraising is a bad thing at all.

I believe the majority of my friends have donated to Obama, but in small amounts. I myself have given several times but only this weekend passed the $200 mark. They have made it easy and appealing to donate in small amounts, a little bit at a time. They have found ways to connect with students via Facebook and other similar sites. They have convinced those small donors that even $25 would help. I know when I was a broke college student, I didn't have any idea that such a small donation to a presidential campaign would do any good. But the Obama campaign has managed to convince hundreds of thousands of broke college students that all of their itty bitty donations add up to a big stockpile of cash.

Maybe it is time to revisit how tax money adds to campaign funds, but I don't think this will be the end of publicly financed campaigns. I mean, if millions of people donating small dollar amounts to a campaign isn't public financing, what is?