a tale of two fundraisers

This morning, Dick Cheney attended a closed door fund-raiser where 150 people each paid $2000 to the Bush 2004 election campaign, raising $300,000. Over this past weekend the Dean campaign put up a fund-raising bat, challenging people to "Beat Cheney". The results? $508,000 donated by 9,600 contributors - all through the internet. That's an average of ~$50 each. Personally, I'd like to see public financing of campaigns, but this is a win for emergent democracy in which the collective action of a lot of people superceded that of a small coterie of elites. I'm not completely sold on Dean, but the DLC's dislike of him surely earns him some points.