THE RISE OF THE NATIONAL PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY.
I am repeatedly struck by just how much larger the 2008 campaign currently appears than the 2004 campaign. The crowds are bigger–including an unbelievable 20,000 people for Obama in Austin. The fundraising is much bigger–Edwards is going to put up numbers roughly equal to Howard Dean in Q3 or Q4, and look as though he is lagging. Already, in just about eight or nine weeks, there has probably been twelve million dollars raised online between the candidates, and that is only going to get much, much bigger. News coverage has also exploded–I tracked Google News results for candidates in 2003 just as much as I do now, and the numbers current candidates are receiving are about ten or twenty times larger than they were in 2003. This is truly a super sized campaign, and when it comes to still making a key impact, the netroots have indeed expanded at a rate that is quite equal to the task.
