Via Jay at Atrios (himself via Matt Stoller), we get a clue to Obama’s success - and how this is the wave of the future for sure:
Money: MyBarackObama.com: With 1.5 million donors, this campaign has blown away anything we’ve ever seen in terms of grassroots fundraising. The technology is all centralized, so Obama knows the name, address, giving patterns, and occupation of every donor out there, as well as social networking information, like who the best raisers are. He has bypassed Actblue, and will probably end up building in a Congressional slate feature to further party build while keeping control of the data.One email from Moveon to their full list can bring in between $100k to $1M for a candidate, with $1M being the very top end of the range. With one good email to his list, in a few months, Obama will probably be able to bring in $1-3M for a Senate candidate under attack or split that among several. 10-20% of the money going to Senate candidates this cycle might come from Barack Obama’s internet operation. Stunning
Field: MyBarackObama.com (MyBO): MyBarackObama.com is the cornerstone of the campaign, and it will have between 10-15 million opt-in members by election day. This group can be used for lobbying on legislation, GOTV, and donations. It’s a cross between Moveon.org and the DNC, and with the White House, it can transform progressive politics and further amplify the power of the Presidency. As coordinated campaigns pick up, and the top of the ticket brings coattails, organizing power is going to further flow to the Obama campaign.
The GOP’s great successes of past years have come, in part, via their mastery of direct mail, and of course the pundit model - the Limbaughs and the like, who spread the messages primarily via talk radio and Fox News. But that demographic skews older; the Democrats’ and particularly Obama’s net connectivity skews younger, and the GOP simply doesn’t have anything that can remotely touch it at this point. And probably won’t for some time, in that a lot of this would be wasted on the existing GOP constituency.
In other words, the right has to keep mining votes from direct mail and the pundit model. The Democrats are less beholden to that; that will pay dividends this time around, and pay huge dividends by 2012 and beyond.
