Let's Get Small

From the things we know that aren't apparently so department: now that the election is over, the myth of the small Obama donor is starting to fade into the mist:

It comes down to which definition of "small donor" you accept:

Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period.

Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the $4,600 legal limit for the primary and general elections. In aggregate, that would vault him/her out of the small donor category that was so useful to the political campaign's public relations campaign portraying the donor base as about two times as broad as it really was.

The reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1,000 or more total) than from small donors.

The bottom line is pretty simple -- you simply can't get elected without having a lot of people who provide big bucks to your campaign. It would be helpful if people stopped pretending otherwise. McCain had a lot of sugar daddies and mommies, too. No doubt about it.

That's why I still contend that the way to deal with campaign finance is simple -- let people give whatever they want, but they have to give it under their own name and the amount needs to be up on the internet, even if the gift is $1. If some nasty plutocrat of the imaginings of the Left wants to buy Sarah Palin or some other Republican the White House in 2012, so be it. Just as long as we know.