Stop putting a halo on Obam fundraising — part II

Here’s why the small donor myth about Obama’s campaign funding, touted anew in this story Sunday, doesn’t hold up, with detailed number crunching.

Assume 4 million people donating $25. That’s $100 million. Another (assuming all these are separate donors) 2 million people at $50 a pop is another $100 million. And, 1 million at $100 donations is another $100 million, for a total of $300 million.

Given that Obama raised $150 million just in September, he will surely take in $300 million just from the end of the convention in Denver to Election Day.

So, ALL his campaign money before that, if you want to impose a chronological overview, would have had to have been from medium to large donors, or people moving out of the small donor category to medium or large donor levels. Given that Obama should get 65 million or a little more votes, that would mean small donors would be more than 10 percent of his campaign.

But, you can’t expect “Jane the schoolteacher” types to have so much money, be so fired up, and have so much political expectation as to donate more than $100.

Taking $100 as the high end for small donors, Obama didn’t gain that much money.

Now, if we want to go with five quintiles of donors, it may be different.

Put medium-small donors as those in the $100-$250 range, medium donors at $250-$500 and medium-large donors at $500-$1,000, and I can tell you Obama’s success.

It was getting donors to move up from small to medium-small or medium levels.

Or, you may say my numbers are too low. Well, if you want to peg small donors up to $200, and medium-small from $200-$500, then Obama’s success is twofold. One is getting donors and the media to raise the bar on what the donation size is to remain a small donor, kind of like arguments about who falls in the middle class, let alone upper-middle and lower-middle class.

But, getting back to my original donation guesstimates.

The point is that Obama couldn’t have raised all the money he did without the help of fat cats, too.

As far as percentage of funds, he’s not had a difference that’s very significant at all from John Kerry four years ago.

But, as marketing, it’s sheer brilliance.

But, you folks who think that just because you sent him 25 whole bucks, he’s gonna listen to you?

Remember this summer? The FISA bill?

And Obama still wound up being a FISA 45 percenter.