Best of the Web Today carried a story about a rather unique fundraiser Barack Obama is running, by allowing people to buy chances for a private dinner for five with the Senator. The fundraising letter suggests that for "even $5, ... Barack wants to sit down with supporters like you." James Taranto wonders,

Just to make this simple, let's estimate conservatively that 100,000 individual donors are eligible for the dinner drawing, and that each of them has donated a mere $5. That would mean that Obama has raised $500,000 by dining with four people. And what's more, [campaign manager David] Plouffe is describing this $125,000-a-plate dinner as an act of populism!

Of course it isn't, but the net contribution to the campaign is just $5 - (.00004 x value of the dinner). If you'd pay $10000 for the dinner with the Senator, and that was a price he'd accept, you're still offering a net $1 gain to the campaign by taking the raffle ticket (and paying the $10k if you lose.) Actually sounds pretty clever.

Labels: politics