This is just astonishing:

Barack Obama has spent a record breaking $60 million to run more than 100,000 political television ads in pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, a new analysis conducted for CNN shows.

In contrast, John Kerry ran a little more than 19,000 TV ads four years ago in his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising spending...

Clinton, who trails Obama in fundraising by about $60 million, has run just over 60,000 TV ads in her bid for the White House.

Obama has run more than five times as many ads as Kerry did. Hillary has run three times as many. Of course, the primary has dragged on far longer, too.

Keep in mind that this ad blitz is funded largely by what is basically a small donor revolution. Obama is now apparently laying the groundwork to possibly opt out of public financing, saying that the Internet has effectively created a "parallel public financing system."

It can be argued -- and Obama likely will argue -- that his success in bringing small donors into the process has proven at least as democratizing as public financing has, if not more so.