This is irrelevant though: he’s already broken the system in the primary, meaning he can spend more now (which is only technically still "the primary") than he otherwise could.  It’d be like him agreeing not to use steroids AT the Olympics when he’d just got done training with them.

Bad’s last blog post..NRO’s Mary Eberstadt Pouts in the General Direction of Atheism

As for "every definition" of a special interest being wealthy individuals, I could not possibly agree less. A special interest can well be large group interests. Emily’s List is damn well a special interest. So is NOW. So is Planned Parenthood. So is the NRA. So is AARP. And so on and so forth.

Right now, the truth of the matter is that Democrats have far more big-money uber-wealthy donors than Republicans do, and that appears to be the real reason the Obaminator is eschewing the public financing, platitudes about "the little guy" aside. Opensecrets.org has plenty of info anyone can check; there are tons of billionaires just itching to hand out Barack Bucks in big fat checks, not to mention the PACs and 527s they’re already running for him and/or planning to ramp up.

By the way, conservatives are right: some of the biggest left/liberal/Democratic heroes of all time were funded by a tiny cadre of wealthy individuals. Truth of the matter is that there’s no shortage of rich people on any political issue, and quite a few who swing left (like the current editor of The Nation, last I heard). Being able to get wealthy donors actually frees up candidates to be themselves and not constantly hustle for dollars and promise favors, which is what they’ve had to do ever since "reforms" started in the 1970s. “Reform” is shorthand for “make the system less free, less accountable, more arcane, more elaborate, and more corrupting.” Or at least, every reform to date has done so, and I expect that trend to continue.

I have zero faith–less than zero, honestly–that Obama will do jack shit to reform things that will do anything other than help him and his party. I guess that’s the one saving grace, if you can call it that, of McCain’s arrogant "reforms," since he shot himself in the foot with McCain/Feingold.

Brilliant.  See you again in 2012.

Phelps’s last blog post..Refinery Capacity

By forgoing public financing, ironically, Obama frees himself from having to court those big guns. Only, of course, because he has the small donor base – an innovation which matured from the Dean campaign 4 years prior. So in every sense, abandoning the public financing system is a good thing, from an etics standpoint and a reform standpoint.

There’s a good editorial on this at The Nation that gets into these issues, but also looks forward:
Of course, small donations alone don’t alleviate the need to fundamentally change how elections are run or financed in this country. Senators Susan Collins and Russ Feingold have sponsored legislation to modernize and update the current presidential public financing system, while Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter have introduced a bill to publicly finance Congressional campaigns. Obama is an original cosponsor of both Feingold-Collins and Durbin-Specter. McCain has declined to sponsor either. The campaign finance reform community recognizes these changing realities, but some leaders still remain wedded to the days of old. Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, one of McCain’s closest allies in the campaign-finance movement, said he was "very disappointed" in Obama’s decision. Public Citizen also proclaimed itself "deeply disappointed." Both Wertheimer and Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook helped to create the post-Watergate system of public financing, so they are naturally reticent at watching it die. Other groups accept that the current system of public financing, in the words of Common Cause President Bob Edgar, "is badly outdated and in need of a major overhaul." They hope Obama, based on his past and future commitments, will be the one to change that. As one campaign-finance reformer told me, "holding Obama accountable for not opting into a broken system isn’t really fair. We want the best reformer to win, not the candidate with a hand tied behind their back."

Wrong.

How about this: abolish the idiotic fucking donations limits completely, require instant disclosure over the internet of all donations above a certain relatively low amount, and let voters decide whether they like what they see or not on a campaign donor’s list?

Hey, freedom, and more information for the voters! And almost no tax dollars spent! What a whacky idea!

McCain first decided to opt into public financing for his primary campaign, and he filed paperwork to do so. He used the commitment to public financing for the primary to get loans to his campaign to keep it going when he was having trouble raising money. Then when his campaign took off and he could again raise money, he changed his mind and decided to opt out of public financing for the primaries. Some FEC officials say he cannot decide to opt in and then change his mind and opt out, but since the FEC does not have enough members to hold a meeting, there is no one to rule this illegal, so McCain was able to get away with it.

In fact, since there is no FEC, candiates can take public financing, ignore all the rules and do whatever they want right now. The system is totally broken.

It’s a sham. Obama’s just another politician who is doing *nothing nothing nothing* to change "business as usual" in Washington. His entire campaign is business as usual for his party and country, except he’s black.

I find Obama’s bullshit on the 527s just that–bullshit. He knows just as well as anyone that he’ll have a ton of 527s on his side, just like Kerry did (although he also pretended he didn’t).

Bad: Welcome to politics. I like and hate it. But see what I said above. McCain pledged to stick with the limits and the public funding for the general election if his opponent would keep his promise.  His opponent did not keep his promise.

I actually share your view of politicians. Most are honest, most try hard to keep their promises and most succeed in keeping most of them. Sometimes they change their minds, or for practical reasons must change their stance. We all do this.

Thus your characterizations of me are more from a lack of context of how I actually feel. I would have thought my frequent harsh criticisms of Senator McCain would have made that point but apparently not? I’m not even all that cynical. That won’t stop me from calling out blatant hypocrisy and broken promises whenever and wherever I see it, most particularly from a candidate whose entire image is at odds with exactly what he’s doing. His excuse on the 527s is the flimsiest of bullshit-impregnated tissue, as he’ll have enormous amounts of 527 help of his own. He’s just demagoguing. He’s allowed to do so–practically any Presidential candidate must do a certain amount of it, after all. But the forces following the Obamessiah need to get real. They have a politician just like any other politician, and he isn’t going to do jack shit to "clean up Washington" any more than Bush or Clinton or anyone else has.

It’s McCain’s embarrassment that he’s done so much to contribute to this unholy mess of a system. How many times do I have to say that?