Slick Barry

So in an expected move, Obama has officially decided to forgo the 85 million dollars in campaign funds from the Government and continue to run on his own money that he is raising from supporters. It sounds really great when he gets on TV and talks about how he is "breaking free from a broken system," and it sure looks awesome when on his website, under his "donate" button, it says "declare your independence" from the public financing. But here's one supporter thats none too pleased with this decision

Months ago, when Barack wasn't the clear front-runner, and wasn't raising astronomical sums of money, he was all over the campaign trail talking about how public financing of campaigns is important, and how he would take the money. Keep in mind that at that point in time, 85 million probably wasn't looking so bad. Had the primaries ended there, who's to say he wouldn't have taken the money right on the spot? I guarantee it would have.

Now, however, he is a rock star. He's raising millions like its nothing, and 85 million is chump change compared to what he could probably raise on his own, and he knows it. Should he accept the public financing, he can't spend any of his own raised money, so taking it would make no sense. Except, of course, if he wanted to keep his word.

Now he's changed the rhetoric. He's going off about how "the system is broken" and how taxpayers shouldn't be financing general election campaigns. Because he's not accepting the funds, now he can pour as much money as he wants into this campaign....substantially more than McCain, especially if McCain chooses to take the 85 million, which I don't think he will now that Barack has chosen not to take it.

It becomes an issue of trust. Barack had said in the past that he was open to taking the public funds, but now that he suddenly has more money on hand, the entire message has changed. Now he's acting like the system is archaic and wrong. I think that the 85 million cap for public financing is a GOOD thing. It keeps the playing field even, and keeps the negative campaigning to a relative low. Lets see how Barack chooses to use all of this extra money that he will have. I don't suspect he will be running McCain off the air with negative campaigning, but I do suspect he will be using it to buy influence in areas he can't reach. It may end up buying votes, and thats the largest crime at all.

He has created a great talking point for McCain, who can try to paint him as a flip-flopper, which is pretty much a death sentence for a young democrat in today's electorate. Obama needs to work hard to make this a non-issue, or something that he thought would help could end up coming back and biting him in the...well it seems appropriate to say "wallet-area."