How the Tech Gap is Killing the Republican Field

Fundraising, messaging, and organizing -- boots on the ground -- are all a tiny fraction of what the Democrats can do, and have done.

by Rod D. Martin
February 16, 2012

In January 2008 alone, a man who’d held federal office for barely three years and who was considered by virtually everyone to be the underdog for his party’s nomination raised $36 million.  46% of that record haul came from small, individual donors through the internet.  It was three times the take of his party’s frontrunner – Hillary Rodham Clinton, who actually had to loan her own campaign $5 million that month – and millions more than the combined total of all the Republican candidates put together.

This Barack Obama built his campaign on a sea of small donors and their small checks.  It must be put that way:  those donors powered the most incredible volunteer effort in electoral history – whole states were fully staffed by volunteers for months before the official campaign could spare a single paid staffer.  Roughly 800,000 individuals both volunteered and gave money to “the One” in 2007 alone, staying even with Clinton in cash and capabilities even…