Every time I've heard the Obama campaign say both proudly and defensively that their "average contribution is under $100" I've strongly suspected that it is a misleading use of the "average" statistic, knowing that the lion's share of contributions could be in amounts of $25 and $50, and yet most of the total dollars could be coming from contributions of thousands of dollars each, perhaps most of which are the maximum individual contribution of $2300 for the general election ($4600 per couple), in addition to whatever they gave during the primaries, subject (I believe) to the same limit.

I'd been intending to check on it, but fortunately WaPo has saved me the trouble, and it turns out I was right. Bolding and italics mine below.

Big Donors Drive Obama's Money Edge

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Lost in the attention given to Obama's Internet surge is that only a quarter of the $600 million he has raised has come from donors who made contributions of $200 or less, according to a review of his FEC reports. That is actually slightly less, as a percentage, than President Bush raised in small donations during his 2004 race, although Obama has pulled from a far larger number of donors.

And that ain't all:

Behind Obama's staggering fundraising numbers, compiled on more than 80,000 pages filed with the Federal Election Commission late Monday, are signs that it was far more than just a surge of Internet donors that fueled a coordinated Democratic effort to try to swamp McCain.

Interest among major party donors grew so fevered that the Democratic Party created a separate committee to capture millions of additional dollars from individuals who had already given Obama the most the law allows and who had also anted up $28,500 to the Democratic National Committee.

The Committee for Change, created in mid-July, has become a vehicle for ultra-rich Democratic donors to distinguish themselves from the 3.1 million others who have put $600 million behind Obama's presidential candidacy.

See the article for how they are doing so http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/21/AR2008102102996_pf.html .

Why is this fact important?

Because whenever Obama or anyone in his campaign or shilling for him tries to excuse his reneging on his pledge to accept public financing with the argument that his campaign is being financed "by the people" to such an extent that it, in effect, substitutes for the public funding system, accomplishing the objective of limiting the influence of large contributors (meaning not just individuals who max out but the "bundlers" who collect maximum contributions from a hundred or more "friends" or contacts within some special interest such as an industry or population segment with a big interest in government policy), you should know that that person is either confused or (more likely, if they are with the Obama campaign) full of sh*t.

And why is it important to know that they are full of sh*t?

Because we need a new, very different, real system of public funding for presidential and Congressional campaigns. Now more than ever, as our government adds to our fiscal imbalance and thus to the ultimate sacrifices that taxpayers and beneficiaries of government spending will be forced to accept, it is critical that in both perception and reality, our leaders are making choices among sacrifices that are not the result of legal corruption (whether in the form of an unstated quid pro quo, preferential access for large contributors/bundlers to make their case, or bias-inducing knowledge on the part of the politician who knows the contributor can help in the next election) or the result of leaders who won elections due to money advantages gained by having policy positions (deliberately, coincidentally, or other) that serve the interest of large contributors.

The system should be voluntary, to avoid any First Amendment problems, but should be made attractive enough that no candidate would want to opt out. There are a number of ways it could be configured, one of which could be greatly increasing the matching ratio of public dollars to private dollars raised, say to 10:1 subject to some spending limit, which could be lifted if one's opponent opts out, with more funds provided to neutralize that opponent's advantage, an element of the system that would disuade candidates from opting out in the first place.

Yes, it would mean taxpayers would have to spend that money. But it would be the best investment taxpayers have ever made (as taxpayers, consumers and citizens), considering all the savings achieved by eliminating/reducing subsidies, special tax breaks, pork for contributors, regulations favorable to special interests, etc., not to mention the intangible benefit of bringing us closer, de facto, to the principle of one-person, one vote.

And yes, it would mean that taxpayers would be funding candidates they don't like, and some they even hate. But we do this already under our current system, albeit to a lesser degree, and we taxpayers pay for all kinds of things we object to, so I hardly see that objection as significant enough to trump all the benefits of such a new system.