Mark Schmitt argues that the real concern after Citizens United should be that small donors will stop giving:
Discussions of money in politics are usually steeped in watery metaphors: The Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision will “open the floodgates” of corporate money, we’re told, which will “drown” or “swamp” the voice of ordinary citizens. Skeptics of campaign finance regulation warn that, like damming a river, it will only divert the flow to other channels.
Permit me to extend the soggy simile for just a few lines more: In the case of water, floods and dambreaks make headlines, but far more human suffering and strife is caused by too little water than by an excess of it. And the same is true of political money. While political reformers still sometimes lapse into slogans like, “Get money out of politics,” or bemoan the total amount spent, in fact, a scarcity of money for campaigns is a source of far more trouble than an excess is.