Fundraising

One of the things that people who support Obama have noticed is that his campaign is very good about asking for money, repeatedly. You don't get an email from them without either a large red DONATE button (pressing it brings you to a page on their web site), or a comment about how critically important it is for you to give money NOW, because the forces of darkness are doing such a good job shoveling out monies of their own. I admit, these emails have been effective in prying money loose from our bank account; we haven't given at the level that would be considered significant, but we've given about ten times what we'd normally give to a campaign.

About two weeks ago, I started seeing the occasional news article about how the Obama campaign had enough money so that they could spend a fair amount in states where McCain had pretty much, but not entirely, a lock on it; the idea being that at the least, they'd force him to spend money there against them, and, who knows, possibly change the color of the state from red to purple, or beyond. This struck me as a pretty nice idea -- not the way I'd like to see campaigns operate, but, after decades of belonging to the party with moral purity and empty cash coffers, a delightful change. When I read articles about how ads for Obama are showing up in Xbox games, I thought it creative (though if I was a gamer, I might get a little annoyed). One article said that whatever else it did, this showed that Obama had more money than he knew what to do with.

So when I got a note about then asking for money, I thought Nah, I'll pass on this. I had the same reaction to the next one. Then I saw the polls dip a bit, about three days ago, going from an average projection of about 350 electoral votes to about 340. This made me slightly uneasy, and I thought that if they continued to slip, I might give them more money anyway. Then, this morning, I saw an interesting headline.

Last month, the Obama campaign raised one hundred and fifty million dollars.

I think maybe I'll keep the checkbook shut. Think they'll mind?