Obama has developed an army of micro-donors during his campaign.
—Lynn Sweet, "Obama passes on public money," Chicago Sun Times, June 20, 2008

Obama's success with these kitchen-table contributors has set up one of the most lopsided financial advantages in modern presidential campaigning. During the first two weeks of October, Obama spent four times more than McCain, including for an unprecedented $82 million saturation-advertising campaign that blanketed the airwaves in key battleground states.

Campaign finance experts have already classified this contest as one of the transformational elections that will dramatically change the way politicians pay for campaigns in coming cycles.

"It's the model of the future," said Rick Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School. "Gone will be the $2,300-a-plate dinner. That will be replaced by the $30,000-a-plate dinner, the kind of select event Obama had hosted by folks like Warren Buffett. And the rest will be the micro-donors — entirely Internet-based."
—Matthew Mosk, "Campaign Finance Gets New Scrutiny," The Washington Post, October 26, 2008

I, for one, would be interested in seeing a microcredit project that I could monitor online and could put my $100 dollars into.
—Thomas Crampton, "Will Digital Communication Undermine NGOs?" (comment), Joi Ito's Web, December 2, 2005