Why Obama not taking public financing shows McCain-Feingold work

Barack Obama, hopefully the next President of the United States, opted not to take public financing of his election campaign. He promised earlier, when he thought he may not make it out of the primaries, that he would. Than something happened. I'm a fairly late comer to the party (about May). He started getting money, lots of money, in 20s and 50s and 100s. In all political campaigns, big money donors split about equally between the canidates. Now, the small donor on the internet makes up the difference.

John McCain and Russ Fiengold wrote a law capping donations to try and prevent any one special interest from becoming beholden of a canidate. Republicans decried this as opressing free speech. It isn't. Actually it has leveled the playing field.

Howard Dean came along in 2004 before Iowa and New Hampshire and decided to use this method to reach people to give small donations. He rolled up big money, but could never translate it to people coming out and voting in January. Course, that scream didn't help either. But the revolution began. The small guys together collectively had as much pull as the big donor.

If the big money is going to split like always, where's the difference going to come in? Yep, the small money donor. Obama is going to be the first politician in a long time beholden to the people. Assaulting him for opting out of public financing is ridiculous. The people have spoken in this case. Their small donations said, Senator Obama, we're with you, please opt out.

McCain is a victim of his own doing. He may have written the law that will bring about his political downfall. The people aren't donating to him (in all fairness I do think the Republicans are 1 election behind in internet fundrasing with Ron Paul being the Howard Dean figure, buzz, crazy and money, no votes).

While that is a lot of money, but it says to me, just remember, every person who gave you $20 they probably could barely afford in this economic time. You'll owe us, Mr President. But at least he'll be willing to listen where as the previous Presidents would not.