“Remember, McCain in 2000 has 40,000 people sign up on the web and raises a couple million bucks. A few years later Howard Dean raises $59 million. The next [netroot darling] is going to be as exponential as Dean was to McCain.” -- Joe Trippi to Ezra Klein, author of article for American Prospect on how a 2008 presidential candidate, specifically Al Gore, with strong backing from the "netroots," could, with a well-timed entrance raise $50 million almost instantly, and hundreds of millions more if he won the nomination:
The fund raising will be easier. So will the communication. Rather than speaking through the press, Gore would be able to blast out speeches on e-mail, post videos on the Internet, release statements on a blog, use online organizing tools to empower the grassroots. The question is whether those distribution channels will have matured to the point that they could serve as primary communication methods for a successful presidential campaign. Because, as Reed Hundt warns, “if you’re using the new medium to get across a new message, but you believe that really the new medium is just a way to get back into the old medium, you’re doomed.”
