Obama Ushers In The Age Of Web PoliticsObama Ushers In The Age Of Web Politics

In capturing the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Barack Obama has made a historic leap: becoming the first African-American candidate for president from a national party. He also has ushered in a new political era by harnessing the power of technology to radically transform the way big campaigns connect with their supporters, produce new blocs of voters, and, in particular, raise money.

Howard Dean and John Kerry are considered the pioneers in bringing a new Internet-based form of campaigning to bear on national political races. But Obama has understood the power of the Web and deployed it in ways not foreseeable just four years ago. Here are the three main ways that Web-based technology helped propel Obama to the Democratic nomination:

1. Fund Raising
As has been reported in many places -- including a long essay by Joshua Green in the June issue of The Atlantic -- Obama has raised an astonishing amount of money from an unprecedented number of donors.

In February, as the race between Obama and Hillary Clinton swung into its most critical phase, he raised a staggering $55 million, with 94% of that coming in donations of $200 or less -- most of it raised online. Thanks to the power of his Web dollar machine, "Obama has raised more money than anybody else without plumbing ethical gray areas or even spending much of his own time soliciting donations," Green writes. "The money just came rolling in."

Today, Obama has raised more than $200 million from more than 1.3 million people -- an unprecedented performance for a candidate with no experience in running a national campaign. In large part that is thanks to his new-media director, Joe Rospars, a former Dean aide who founded an online fund-raising company after the 2004 election.

Commenting on The Washington Post's Web site, one Obama enthusiast caught the spirit of the new-style fund raising: "A lot of the small donations coming from the Internet represent the new generation, the MySpace generation, of voters. Raised on the Internet, they are much more comfortable donating in this way -- and thousands of younger supporters with low incomes and a much more digital life transform into thousands of low donations digitally. It's brilliant to feel as if you're part of something, as if your $50 is making a difference."

2. Tapping Into The Valley
The information technology industry in Northern California has become a major force in Democratic national politics, taking over the king-making role that the David Geffen crowd down in Hollywood played in the 1990s.

No one saw the importance of that development like Obama: his Northern California finance chairman, John Roos, is the CEO of the storied Palo Alto tech-law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. And Roos helped Obama tap into the emerging Silicon Valley power base, centered on relatively young high-tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and geeks who see politics as a natural outlet for their organizational zeal and tech smarts, and who will likely play a major role in the national race in the fall.

Among Obama's thousands of online "affinity groups" is Entrepreneurs for Obama, which helped galvanize the tech community and establish a direct pipeline to the wealth of the valley. Many of these supporters are relatively new to politics, having had their heads down building Web companies the last five or 10 years, and they have no problem writing a check for $2,300 -- the maximum amount allowable from an individual under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws.

3. Bringing Social Networking To Politics
The most popular version of "Yes We Can," the music video in support of Obama, now has nearly 8 million viewings on YouTube. The Internet has transformed retail politics this country: If all politics are local, then everybody's local on the Web. More than anything else, Obama's understanding of the power of the Internet and of new forms of communication (after speeches he often asks rally attendees to type the campaign's text-message number into their cell phones to offer their contact info) has brought his star power and his message of hope and change to entirely new audiences disconnected from the mainstream media and traditional political parties.

Obama has demonstrated that understanding in his legislative career. In 2006 he co-sponsored the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which will create a Google-like search engine and database to track $1 trillion in federal spending. President Bush signed that bill on Sept. 26, 2006.