Mark Schmitt’s thoughtful and provocative article has spurred a very welcome conversation among those of us who think that fixing the democracy has to be one of the progressive movement’s big goals. The goal can’t be to end the role of money in politics. It must be to create incentives to give average citizens the most powerful voice in their democracy.

The article is bursting with ideas, and I can’t respond to all of them in one post. Let me start with a few of Mark’s big points.

The first is tonal. Simply, reformers err when we take a “hygienic” approach to politics and campaign finance reform. Endless calls to “Clean Up Congress,” “Drain the Swamp,” and so forth, presume many things that are neither true nor shared by voters. Such calls presume that politics is yukky, money is filthy lucre, the clamor of interest groups is per se a problem. It is a classic mugwump pose that explained why earnest reformers failed to reach the urban working classes in the 1800s, and why the posture of political reform too often fails to speak to many communities today.

The second point is substantive – finding ways to strengthen the mass participation and mobilization that we have seen in recent years. I strongly support public financing. The Brennan Center for Justice helped advise lawmakers who drafted the Connecticut law, for example, and we're now working to defend it in court. But we can’t fetishize full public funding as the only possible reform. In New York City, where I live, the system of four-to-one matching funds has created a regime where candidates do endless small dollar house parties as their organizing strategies. It is not possible for even the most entrenched incumbent to simply take a public financing grant and buy ads (or direct mail). No, special interests have not been banished from politics; candidates and officeholders still worry about rich people and lobbyists; and the occasional billionaire still runs for mayor and spends $70 million to win and then another $75 million to cruise to reelection. But the incentive system created by the four-to-one match has truly catalyzed small donor democracy. Candidates run for and win city council races who could never have done so otherwise.

Many reformers have long viewed such matching fund systems as a half a loaf – acceptable to some, unacceptable to others. Schmitt argues that matching funds are not just an acceptable compromise, but may be better than full public financing. Among other things, such a system would find a way to augment, not squelch, the enthusiasm that comes from online small dollar fundraising.

It’s worth noting that BCRA (the McCain-Feingold bill) helped create many of the trends that now have strengthened politics. Because parties and candidates must rely far more on “hard” money, Democrats especially now have an incentive to build a fundraising base of small donors, something Republicans, to their credit, already had done. One longtime Democratic fundraiser told me that in the 2004 cycle, the DNC raised $12 million in the Northeast, only $4 million from large donors. If there is a moment for “small donor democracy,” BCRA helped to create it.

The bottom line is that campaign reform can’t end the role of money in politics. Our goal must be to create a possibility for candidates to run and win without spending most of their time genuflecting to big economic interests, and to find a way to empower ordinary Americans. Money, spent right and raised right, can be a powerful tool for democracy. Fortunately, the return of public funding to the national debate points us in the right direction.