The funny thing about federal financing during this election cycle

[Perky]

If you look at the calendar, the nominating conventions are not until the end of August and the first week of September. that effectively means that the campaigns are free to raise and spend all they want to up until the point they are nominated. So effectively it is about $85 Million a piece for about 9 weeks of the fall campaign.

I suspect the parties pushed the conventions back for that reason. $10M a week ought to be ample.

Now it seems to me that this is pretty much a non issue because in the case of Obama in particular he is going to have a whole lot of money in his pocket between now and the nominating convention to make his case.

Hell he can even buy all his campaign advertsing out of his primary accounts... He could prepay his staff. He could use the $85 Million in federal dollars just for GOTV.

So no matter what he may or may not have agreed to it seems to me that the playing field is far from even anyway you slice it.

thoughts.

[K Gardner]

1. I'm listening to a segment about this on MSNBC right now with

Buchanan and Finn weighing in. They say McCain wants Obama to commit now to the cap because McCain has literally tens of millions in 527s that his RW supporters are ready to launch against Obama. Your points are good, I hadn't thought about prepaying. Might be a good strategy, but I do hope Obama doesn't let McCain bully him into making a decision now. The playing field has changed in the past months, certainly in the past year. I don't think anyone saw THIS coming. One must adjust strategy as the game proceeds and Obama has done this well so far.

[thevoiceofreason]

2. Maybe say he'll agree to the limit -- until the first 527 ad hits