Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Money Makes The World Go Round

I was looking for actual recent numbers about candidate fundraising and small donors to compare Clinton and Obama's success with such creatures, but I couldn't find them. Anyway, the story seems to be that Obama has had a lot more luck with them than Clinton, and that this gives him a big money advantage going forward.

Too often conversations about the disproportionate influence of big money in politics quickly evolve into a general hostility about the unseemliness of any money in politics. There will be the inevitable newspaper articles about how BILLIONS OF DOLLARS were spent on campaign-related stuff and how gross all of that is.

But campaigns cost money. We'd all prefer it if less of that money was spent on television advertising, but even if that was the case campaigns would still cost a lot of money. Staff costs money. Offices cost money. Rallies cost money. Fliers cost money.

It'll be pretty interesting if Obama wins the race in part because of his small donor success. It would be a game changer in politics, telling future candidates that this is something they need to duplicate in order to be competitive. Those $2300 checks are great, but campaigns shouldn't depend solely on them.

And speaking of fundraising, we're still in the middle of Eschaton SUPER FEBRURARY FUNTASTIC FUNDRAISING. Think of the kitties.