37 Days
As a supporter of Barack Obama’s candidacy for President, today’s announcement that he raised $150 million dollars in September is exciting, but it’s also very troubling.
There is no question that he has managed to broadly engage Americans in the democratic process like never before. Obama’s campaign added over 600,000 new donors in September, bringing the number of contributors to over 3.1 million, each with an average donation of $86.
But as a native Canadian, the length and cost of this campaign is mind-boggling. As some may know, Canada just held a federal election. It was called by Stephen Harper on September 7th and conducted this past week, on October 14. Total time for campaigning: 37 days. By comparison, here in the US, campaigning started over 20 months ago and the presidential candidates alone will spend over a billion dollars. Something is just not right with this system.
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