Obama! No, Clinton! No, McCain! No, that guy nobody knows over there!

The fact that the US 2008 Presidential election race is already "heating up" according to msnbc.com is slightly ridiculous. We don't vote for a year and half! Can you imagine how many dumb/vicious/stupid campaign commericals will be aired during the meantime?

Some figures: Clinton and McCain are expected to be able to raise $80-100 million this year alone, to gear up for the nomination gridlock. I guess McCain learned his lesson from 2000 - you have the integrity not to play like the big boys, and George Bush becomes president. So, let's see how much else he "lets go of" during the race, hmm? The others are pretty close behind, with Romney, Giuliani, Obama and Edwards posting excellent campaign contribution totals as well.

Some fun totals from Yahoo! news:

• Giuliani brought in $1.4 million in the first few weeks of his campaign and has $2 million left from an aborted Senate bid in 2000.
• Clinton hopes to raise at least $75 million this year. She has asked contributors to give the maximum amount for both the primary and general election since she plans to bypass the public financing system entirely.
• Obama isn't accepting donations from political action committees and lobbyists. Following Clinton's lead, he also doesn't plan to accept public campaign financing for either the primaries or the general election.
• Edwards is building on the remnants of a fundraising network from his unsuccessful 2004 presidential run. Like Obama, he isn't accepting donations from political action committees and lobbyists. And like Clinton and Obama, he plans to reject public financing altogether. So far, ACTBlue.com says he has raised more than $700,000 online.
• McCain has added high-profile people to his fundraising network in place from his failed 2000 presidential bid. His team includes Lewis M. Eisenberg, a Bush backer in 2004 and former partner at Goldman Sachs who founded the Granite Capital International Group.
• Romney brought 400 volunteers to Boston to dial for dollars using a custom-made software program dubbed the ComMITT system that allows volunteers to set goals and gather pledges and actual donations online. The take was $6.5 million in a single day.

It's a brave new world - how many of these impressive candidates are online? That would be all of them. Not only can you watch speeches they have posted online, but online donations have become easy and in Romney's case, have helped him raise millions already.

According to CBS news, Romney's campaign fundraising strategy works thusly: "When they log onto QuickComMITT, fundraising volunteers will use a password from the campaign. They will enter information about each person they call, down to whether they couldn't reach them or left a message. The system supersedes spreadsheets of past campaign and the tracking numbers that the Bush-Cheney campaign used to credit supporters for money they had raised. If the prospective donor wants to make a contribution, the credit card information is processed from the same screen, making the job of raising money for Romney as easy "as buying something from eBay or booking an airline ticket online," according to the instructions for users."

Just like eBay, folks! Get in line to support your favorite candidate and send a little cash their way. The article goes on to say, "President Bush has raised more money than any politician in history. So his system has been deconstructed by fundraisers on both sides, and several of the campaigns are blatantly copying some of his strategies. As first reported in the New York Daily News by Ben Smith, now with The Politico, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has created a Bush-Ranger knockoff using a baseball motif, with a descending structure of Team Captains, MVPs, All Stars and Sluggers."

You know, this is almost as annoying as seeing how much money professional athletes are paid. I'm sure this is helping the economy somehow, since it's generally rich folks who are donating cash (which I'm sure is tax deductible), and the workers bees are getting paid somehow, but still.... it's really sad. It's not as though any individual really has the power to make his/her voice heard anyway. I'll vote, because it's something I'm supposed to do, but it's so frustrating knowing that even if someone like Obama is nominated, he won't actually be able to change things much, and the rest of them are machine policiticians.