Yes and no

The internet era has brought about the rise of small dollar donors making an outsized impact (for better or worse - it's not always a good thing)

This has given rise to more forms of populism (left and right, benign and toxic)

In any case, it does provide some counter weight to large donor class.

Money tends to have diminishing returns past a certain point, when it comes to elections.

And I think people underestimate what dopes many large donors are - that just get milked by the party people pumping them full of sweet talk and don't really get much in return

Trump famously won without having the largest donors. He only had 1 big backer (Robert Mercer) in 2016 before the Republican primaries, he was assumed to be a joke candidate. After he won the primaries, he finally got some recognition from the establishment, but even then, they were tepid on investing in him because he was assumed to lose the election.

He’s basically proof of the power of the common man’s vote in the US.

not at all. wow people need to do some basic research on this. the Republicans are driven by a tiny handful of billionaires and with Musk, trillionaires. Democratic candidates OTOH rely to a vastly larger extent on millions of individual donors sending $100 or less - there are still large donors but their contribution to Democrats is close to an order of magnitude less than what GOP megadonors provide.

Of course, both of these funding models should be banned which would mean dismantling the Citizens United decision spearheaded by the now-known-to-be-fully-corrupt Roberts court, which might require a constitutional amendment.