I Was Right!

... As usual.

Before I begin today's post, I just want to say: I WAS RIGHT! Romney's dropping out of the race has stopped McCain's sweeping victories cold. The social conservatives, anti-immigration conservatives, and hardcore evangelicals have had the fear of God (or maybe the fear of not-God) put into them, and they're swarming to the polls. Out of the three primary states that voted yesterday, Huckabee took two of them. Call it the Colbert bump. He's gonna take Virginia as well. Everyone writing for Reuters is still assuming that McCain is going to lock up a decisive victory, but Romney still hasn't endorsed him, and Romney has a lot of delegates up for grabs.

Fundraising in the New Era

On the Democratic side, Obama took all three states by a significant margin. Nobody can say it was all black voters voting for him either, because one of those states was Washington. His new support is due in part to the fact that by performing well enough to stay in the race after Super Tuesday, he proved that he has a chance of beating Hillary, so people who otherwise would have felt that a vote for him was a vote wasted changed their minds.

Another reason Obama did so well has to do with the amount of money that he's been raising. A big deal has been made out of the millions that Barack Obama and Ron Paul have been taking in during this campaign; despite the fact that he has yet to win a primary, Ron Paul is the top fundraiser among the Republicans for the last quarter of 2007. Further, a big deal is being made of the fact that most of these donors are donating small sums of money, and can be tapped again later on in the election. Ron Paul supporters, for example, are holding another big fundraiser on Ron Paul and his wife's anniversary.

The pundits -- and some of the candidates -- are at a loss to explain where this support came from. It's something that first seemed to spring up around Howard Dean four years ago, although his "grassroots" support evaporated when he made a fool of himself with the Crazy Yell. Other candidates have tried to cultivate it, but internet junkies in this day and age are wise enough to the ways of advertising to know when they're being used. They seem to attach themselves to candidates at random, candidates who often don't seek their support -- Ron Paul is as bewildered as anyone about the sudden flood of donations that he's getting -- and they become rabid supporters, converting everyone that they can in their frequent interactions among the highly interconnected internet community.

But what really surprises the pundits is how much money these people are donating. Generally donors are the big money givers who expect favors in return, or older people who have the money to spare. But these people are practically kids, twentysomethings working retail jobs, and college students with huge loans they'll have to pay. The pundits and the media are at a complete loss to explain why they're sending money to their candidates in such droves as to make those candidates top fundraisers by a wide margin when they have hardly any money of their own.

Well, I'm reasonably hip enough to explain it. And so I will.

Culture of Donation

My generation has grown up donating small sums of money over the internet to things that they like. National Novel Writing Month got $284,723 in donations and tee-shirt sales during November last year, most of it in very small sums. There are several web comic artists, such as Pete from Sluggy Freelance and Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade who make their living entirely off of the donations and tee-shirt sales of their fans. Recently, Radiohead offered their latest album as a free download, with a 'pay what you want' system, and the rumor is that the profits from the digital download has outstripped the profits from any of their traditionally released studio albums. OpenOffice, a free office suite that's every bit as good as Microsoft Office, is a free download, as is the web browser Firefox. All of these programs are produced because of donations by people who don't need to pay for them, but who are used to throwing a few dollars at things they like. Every year, users of Livejournal who have the largest followings organize a "blogathon" where they promise to blog for 24 hours straight, posting an entry every fifteen minutes. They restrict access to these entries to people who donate money to their cause, and raise hundreds of dollars for their charities. Knitters Without Borders, a group organized by Stephanie Pearl-McFee, popularly known to her fans as the Yarn Harlot has raised nearly $500,000 for Doctors Without Borders.

You get the idea. My generation is used to tossing whatever small amount of money that they can spare at the things that they enjoy, use, or care about. We understand that if we want this thing, whatever it is, to stick around, we need to support it. And all of those small donations add up fast. The internet is, as I said, a large and highly interconnected community. Once a meme catches on with a few people, it sweeps through everyone like wildfire. People post on their blogs, Facebook and Meetup groups form, videos go up on YouTube, websites start springing up and are linked to other websites -- and before long, hundreds of thousands of people are donating a couple of bucks, whatever they can spare, because that's their usual reaction to something that they want to see more of.

Barack Obama and Ron Paul caught on like wildfire, because their messages appealed to internet users, and their memes translated into money. That's where the money is coming from.

The only problem is that the internet can be fickle, and easily distracted by something shiny. If either Barack Obama or Ron Paul makes a fool of themselves on national television, a la Howard Dean's crazy screaming (which was remixed and mocked internet-wide for months), their support will vanish as fast as it appeared.

As for me? I'm a retail drone engaged to a starving student, so we're hardly rich people. I haven't donated yet, but I do plan to do so later in the general election when cash funds start running low. I figure that there's only so much that I can afford, and my money will be most useful then.