Yesterday, Hillary filed her FEC money report for the period ending Mar 31,2008. (Feb numbers here)

Her fundraising has dropped dramatically (from 34.5 in February to 20.1 million in March)

Her debts have increased (now 10.3M owed to vendors vs 8.7 the month before)

She is again spending more than fundraising (spending 2 million more in March than she took in)

And now, even if she writes off her 5 million loan (easy to do when you make 20M+ a year), her cash on hand minus debts owed vendors minus money only spendable in a general election (in the unlikely case she makes it that far) are now at least a half-million in the red.

As a business, she would have to either declare bankruptcy or put more of her money in. But as a political organization, I guess not paying bills and running a deficit is just same old same old politics.

Josh Marshall writes

The next president will either be John McCain or the Democratic nominee. That's an immovable fact. Not voting or voting for some protest candidate doesn't allow anyone to wash their hands of that choice.

From the NY Times comes this little gem:

"Mr. McCain's advisers said that the candidate, despite his signature legislative efforts to restrict the money spent on political campaigns , would not accept public financing and spending limits for this year's general campaign.

But in 2007, Mr. McCain did agree to a nonaggression pact with Senator Barack Obama to accept public financing, about $85 million each for the general election, if the Democratic nominee did the same. Mr. Obama, who is raising money at a rate of $1 million a day, has since said he will not use public financing for the fall campaign."

We all know politicians make empty promises, but every once in a while you encounter a promise that seems real, from the rare major candidate that seems real.

I haven't been any more comfortable with Obama keeping a promise than I have been with Clinton. But on this one, I thought was safe. And I know McCain's reputation for honesty is overblown, but I really thought this one was safe too.

So what happens? They both bail on their promise. And why? Since it seems Obama blinked first, the only reason is that Obama has already become drunk with the power of being able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. And forget the "small donor" meme and look at the actual dollars. At least half of his money comes from people spending at least $1000 on Obama.

I sort of get McCain bailing on his promise as a pander to the wacko idea that everyday conservatives value the ability of a tiny percent of their numbers being able to donate huge dollars. It still seems lame given how much of his reputation was staked on taking money out of politics.

Both of them get a big thumbs down for this move.