If Barack Obama decides to limit general election contributions to $100 or $150, it will represent the apotheosis of the political revolution that Joe Trippi, as Howard Dean's campaign manager, first led.
On page 235 of his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Trippi wrote:
"W'e've had the right to fix this broken, corroded, and corrupt system since the earliest days of our Republic. Two hundred and eight years later we finally have the tools to do it -- the tools to bring us together in common purpose to reclaim what is rightfully ours, beginning with the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. We have it in our power to reclaim our government and with it our national purpose.It would be easy to do. If six hundred and thirty-one wealthy individuals can raise more than a hundred million dollars to elect George Bush -- it will only take two million Americans contributing less than a hundred dollars each to defeat him.
Call it Jefferson's revenge.
Call it the $100 revolution. It doesn't matter what you call it, now is the time to make it happen."
The book was published in 2005, but Trippi has been trying to get his candidates to make this risky gambit for years -- remember Jerry Brown and his $100 contribution limits? In 1992, he was able to raise eight million when supporters pledged money over his toll-free phone number.
Trippi was ridiculed by his party for pushing unilateral disarmament -- even Obama's campaign rejected the idea for the primaries, fearing that they wouldn't be able to raise enough -- but now, this idea -- the last real unfulfilled of his revolution -- will become a reality.
The Obama campaign has not been eager to associate itself with Trippi -- and indeed, several Obama innovations were constructed specifically with the Dean campaign's organizational failings in mind; if Trippi would things X way, the campaign would try them another way. But echoes of Trippi, of Howard Dean's revolution, are everywhere. And capping donations to raise money for a general election is as much his triumph as anyone else's.
Full disclosure: Trippi and I are both consultants for CBS News.
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