Lots of folks are punditing about the Howard Dean campaign—most working
with few facts. So here are a couple of facts to mull over. You heard it first:
1. Through today, thousands of grassroots supporters continue
restocking the Dean campaign with cash. As I reported here
recently, in the 72 hours after New Hampshire more than 10,000
supporters contributed almost $70 each—for a total of $680,000 in three
days. This shows the power of the large numbers of people that
can easily touch the campaign through the web. I don’t know what
will happen next, but I can say that numbers suggest that the
grassroots can completely reload the campaign with cash if they want to.
2. We all know that where an organization gets its funding has a
powerful effect on its priorities—even if the members think
otherwise. So I find the following intriguing, given the
centrality of grassroots funding in this current period: Probably the
most influential person in the campaign right now is Zephyr, our
grassroots evangelist. She is organizing all sorts of initiatives
and creating momentum. In addition, word has it that Karen Hicks, the
community organizer extraordinaire who led our New Hampshire grassroots
campaign, and who worked with Marshall Ganz and others to create the
house meeting model, is taking on a new and central role in the
national campaign.
