More extraordinary news just arrived in an email this morning from Howard Dean: “On Friday we raised $500,000 online in one day, $200,000 on Saturday, and another $300,000 yesterday.”
This puts the campaign at $6.3 million for the quarter so far, which ends at midnight tonight.
This total is truly remarkable for grassroots campaign fundraising, and when widely reported I predict this result will change perceptions of the Dean campaign, which in turn will result in more acceleration.
This is the power of grassroots campaigning plus the web.
Of course, all Democrats have much more to do. The New York Times reported yesterday that George Bush is planning to raise and spend $170 million BEFORE he is officially nominated next year. No, you didn’t read that wrong–”one hundred seventy million.”
From the story titled “Bush Plays if Fast, with Hard Money”
“By early next March, Democrats will probably have settled on a nominee for president.
“At that point, with no opposition in the primaries, President Bush’s reelection campaign is expected to begin spending teh massive amount of money it is raising to paint an unfavorable picture of the Democratic candidate in the voter’s minds and to establish the terms of the fall contest in a way that benefits the president.
“It is almost certain that the Democrats will not have the money to respond. ‘They will be flat on their backs,” said Scott Reed, an experienced Republican consultant…”tired from an exhausting primary campaign, still at each other’s throats, and completely broke.’
“..Mr. Bush is foregoing matching money, so there will be no limit to what he can spend. His campaign says it plans to raise $170 million, almost twice what Mr. Bush had in 2000 when he also refused matching money and faced stiff primary opposition, and many times more than any other candidate has every spent.”
The point here is that in the Bush campaign, the Democrats face a true first superpower of fundraising and media air stikes and smart bombs. Only a second superpower strategy can possibly work. Grassroots, combined with the web, will be where our creativity goes. To win, we will find a way to seed and nurture a self-organizing, self-expanding on-the-ground network of informed, empowered people who will change the game in electoral politics.
