Obama's Money Machine

I'm proud to say that so far this year, I've already contribued three times to the Obama money machine. According to Politico, small donors like me have Senator McCain running scared:

If each of Obama's donors gave him a modest $250, he'd have $375 million to spend during the two-month general election sprint. That's $186 million a month; $47 million a week.

During the same September to Nov. 4th period, McCain will have about $85 million to spend since he has decided to take taxpayer money to help finance his campaign activities.

The Republican National Committee, which is charged with closing the gap between McCain and Obama, has $40 million in cash. Obama raised almost as much -- $31 million - from just his small donors in the month of February. His total for the month, $57 million, exceeded the RNC's cash balance.

Obama has more than 1.5 million donors; McCain has a few hundred thousand. If just a million of Obama's donors sent him the maximum donation, $2,300, he could raise $2.3 billion.

With numbers like that, I can understand why the Republicans are nervous. As Senator Obama and the DNC start doing joint fundraising, I expect the DNC will close the gap on the RNC. And as the article makes clear, Senator McCain himself just won't be able to compete with the Obama money machine. Could we really see the first billion dollar campaign? Time will tell.