The death of public financing of elections

One of the many historic notes of the 2008 campaign--the sure death of public financing of elections. Now that the end of the elections is (hopefully) less than 48 hours away, mainstream media and the blog world have started thinking about this, quite seriously.

In Spiked, Helen Searls writes that:

Amongst liberals, the old mantra against politics and money has evaporated. Obama’s war chest is allowing him to do things few Democrats dared to dream were
remotely possible. His ‘freedom of speech’, or at least his ability to speak frequently and at length, is now boundless. Such is the reach of his money that not only can he buy up primetime TV for the night, he can also run adverts in every state every night, he has campaign staff on the payroll in every state, offices in nearly all the counties of battleground states, and he has even embedded adverts in popular video games like Guitar Hero.
With such a dazzling operation, the liberal money critics seem to have vanished. Could it be it was not so much money and politics that they objected to, but rather Republican money and politics? Maybe an Obama win will silence all those who want to restrict money in politics once and for all. That certainly would be a political sea change.

You might think that Spiked is always a contrarian outpost, and they seem to relish beating up on the American liberals and the British Labor. But, what about the NY Times? In its story, the Times notes that:

advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign finance said they were alarmed by
the more than $1.5 billion that had been raised by the presidential candidates
in the primary and general elections this year — the first time presidential
aspirants have topped $1 billion. (The Obama campaign alone has raised more than
$600 million.) ....
Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska who serves as an honorary chairman of a group that fights for public financing of federal races, wrote an opinion article in The New York Post last week in which he confessed to newfound ambivalence on the issue in light of Mr. Obama’s success among small donors and the energy he had seen in the election this year.
Mr. Kerrey said in an interview that part of his change of heart might indeed be because the existing system was benefiting Democrats, and he said he believed that many others in his party were wrestling with the issue anew because of the changed calculus.