Web Will Weave 2008 Campaign - Technology - RedOrbit

Web Will Weave 2008 Campaign - Technology - RedOrbit: "By E.J. Dionne WASHINGTON - Does Barack Obama have the potential to trump Hillary Clinton's money, organization and methodical planning by becoming the online phenomenon of 2008? The answer to that question might determine who wins the Democratic presidential nomination. This is the election in which Internet campaigning will reach maturity. The 2000 campaign offered the first glimmers of the medium's power when John McCain surprised the political world by raising $6 million to $7 million online in his unsuccessful Republican primary campaign against George W. Bush. Howard Dean rode the Internet from nowhere to a strong early position in the 2004 Democratic presidential race, only to fall to John Kerry. The same anti-Bush sentiment that had powered Dean later allowed Kerry to raise an estimated $82 million in Internet contributions. Today, the next new thing is old hat - but still evolving. 'It's so mainstream now that every part of the campaign touches the Internet,' said Becki Donatelli, who pioneered McCain's 2000 Internet fundraising and is working for him again. 'It's the 900- pound gorilla. It's the real thing.' That, says Joe Trippi, Dean's first campaign manager and a longtime preacher of the Internet gospel, means that no single 2008 candidate will have the early command of the online world that Dean enjoyed. 'It's hard to have a Dean-like phenomenon ever again,' said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive advocacy group, 'because the Internet is not a shiny new toy anymore.' The question is whether Obama will have an edge as the candidate who talks about his campaign as a participatory mass movement and is trying to embody the word 'new.' Trippi, who is neut"