(Laura is the deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Social Justice at New York University Law School. We're thrilled to have her analysis of how we should best think about a critical component of this election cycle's fundraising landscape: small donors and small donations. -- the editors)

Ever since the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) first published an analysis of the Obama small donor numbers several weeks ago, the ink has been flowing. CFI's central claims -- that small donor influence on Obama's fundraising is a "myth" and that the percentage of small donations in Obama's cash haul (26%) does not differ from Bush's 2004 numbers (25%) -- made a big splash. Besides the New York Times, MyDD and The Politico, Bob Bauer, Obama's election law attorney, Rick Hasen, a law professor, and Brad Smith, a campaign finance opponent, all weighed in. On the heels of the flap, Michael Malbin, the study's author, defended his conclusions as based on established categories in campaign finance analysis.

Much of the discussion in the campaign finance community centered on whether it is fair, in a long election season, to characterize the mid-range donors who gave multiple gifts that put them over the $200 mark (whom CFI calls "repeaters") as something other than a "small" donor. Malbin's defense of CFI's line-drawing centers around the indisputable fact that $200 is the reporting threshold for donors under federal law.

But whatever the nomenclature, this complaint with CFI's act of unmasking misses the forest for the trees. We may just be counting the wrong things altogether.

Small Donations, Mid-Sized Donors, and Obama's Cash "Revolution;" "There's Still a Big Hole in Our Game Plan...;" Keeping Up the Democratic Web; Kossacks Take to Congress; Open-Source Obama; and much more.

Jose Vargas rightly got a lot of attention last week for the stunning numbers he was given by the Obama internet team about their online success. As he reported: "3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once."

This looks and sounds like a revolution in how presidential campaigns can be financed, but now comes a valuable reality check, from the Campaign Finance Institute, run by veteran campaign analyst Michael Malbin. It turns out Obama was more dependent on big donors than Vargas's data seems to suggest. A lot more.

The Washington Post is out tonight with the really big numbers on the Obama campaign's success online. And email is still the killer app.

Online fundraising seems to work best when underlying receptivity to a message combines with a sense of urgency. Thus, last week, immediately after John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, his campaign received a huge wave of donations -- $4.5 million in the first 24 hours, reportedly. That was the Republican base waking up.

Now, I suspect we are going to see an even bigger haul for Barack Obama today and tomorrow. If the Palin pick woke up the conservative evangelical community that, until now, was lukewarm on McCain, the hard-edged speeches from last night's Republican convention, which were watched widely (compared to Tuesday night, when GOP ratings slumped) by voters of all stripes, are not just firing up the Right. That's why I predict Obama will bring in $10 million today and tomorrow.

Do the netroots -- a term now embraced by Merriam-Webster -- represent the Democratic party base or a small but vocal minority?; the DNC announces plans for a new online platform-crafting site much like the RNC's GOPPlatform2008.com; Latino bloggers react to the presidential campaigns outreach efforts; t-shirt contest!; and much, much more.

This morning, the Obama campaign sent out an email to its supporters urging them to watch an "important announcement" that "he wanted you to hear first." The news? As expected by many observers, Obama has decided to opt out of the presidential public financing system for the general election. Instead of taking approximately $85 million in public funds and agreeing to stop raising money and abide by that spending limit, he has chosen to rely on his gigantic donor base, which currently numbers 1.5 million individuals. The question going forward is, can he really finance his fall campaign in such a way that it is based on a new form of public, i.e. small donor-based, funding?

A new meme is spreading around the Tubes, and it’s a good one. Clay Shirky, part sociologist and part technologist, has coined the term “Cognitive Surplus”. Shirky, the author of the must-read Here Comes Everybody, gave a talk the other week on the topic. The implications of this idea in the political arena are already becoming apparent, and the Obama campaign seems to be the most able to harness it.

Yesterday, something like $15 million to $20 million allegedly was donated to the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaigns online. We don't really know for sure.

So now the Clinton campaign is walking back has clarified its post-PA fundraising numbers (and I'm clarifying my initial post as well). As I noted yesterday, the campaign's finance co-chair Hassan Nemazee left the distinct impression with both the Washington Post and Business Week that the campaign had somehow pulled in more than $10 million "overnight" from Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. Today's New York Times and Washington Post both take those claims as achievements, but Peter Daou, the campaign's internet director, makes clear that they haven't quite made it there yet $10M was a projection that the campaign put out midday and hit sometime last night. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has probably pulled in $6.5 million since Tuesday, and most of that was before it started an email push in response to Clinton's claims.