The other upside of the drawn-out campaign

USA Today:

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are increasingly funding their presidential campaigns through donations of $200 or less, a USA TODAY analysis shows, in a break from previous contests dominated by wealthier contributors.

More than half of the $194 million that Clinton and Obama collected from January through March for their primary fight came from small donations, according to the analysis of data compiled by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute. That's up from about 15% of the $43.5 million collected by both Democrats during the same period last year.

[...] Obama's small donation outreach is "staggering," said Jonathan Krasno, a political scientist at New York's Binghamton University. "He has done more to reach out to people and to get their donations than I thought was possible."

Krasno said Clinton has had to find "new donors to compete with his fundraising success and to pay for a race that has lasted longer than expected."

This is a direct consequence of the extended primary season. See, our politics historically has been dominated by big money -- but in this cycle, all the wealthy donors gave the $2300 limit way back in early 2007, and the campaigns planned their spending to pretty much end after Super Tuesday. So all the subsequent campaigning has had to be funded by ordinary small donors, simply by default, and the campaigns have been forced to use these new fundraising models! Which, conveniently, are engaging countless thousands of new people into the political process and doing more to wrest control of the system away from the rich than anything else this year. Think about THAT next time you complain about the Endless Campaign...

(via Taegan Goddard)