Bernie Sanders has collected more than 6.5 million donations from 2 million contributors, according to his campaign. | AP Photo Obama: Sanders deserves credit for promoting small political donations

President Barack Obama credits Bernie Sanders for helping promote small donations in political races.

When asked Thursday about the American public’s faith in democracy, Obama said money in politics is a cause for cynicism.


“Now we’ve seen some interesting work being done,” Obama said during an impromptu briefing with college reporters. “You know, you’ve got to give Bernie Sanders, for example, credit [for] building off some of the work that I did. I, in turn, built off the work that Howard Dean did for smaller donations, grass-roots donors and small contributions to allow candidates to be competitive.”

Sanders has collected more than 6.5 million donations from 2 million contributors, according to his campaign. The average donor gives $27. Sanders raised $44 million in March alone.

“But I think that we don’t want to leave that to chance,” Obama said. “And that’s much harder to do for members of Congress who are lower profile, so they don’t get the sort of viral presence that allows them to raise that kind of money to compete.”

Obama also criticized the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which opened the door to super PACs and a surge in spending by politically active nonprofits.

“Half the time, nobody knows who’s funding [advertisements], and that makes you cynical, partly because most of this money is spent on negative ads, so you’re just hearing constantly how horrible everybody is,” he said. “That'll make you feel pretty bad about the political process.”