The money question

Over the past twenty-four hours, I've seen an awful lot of analysis from the Dean and Clark camps suggesting that Kerry and Edwards will have less success than expected coming out of Iowa because of their relative inability to raise money. Which would make sense if the Dean/Clark fundraising advantage to date were based on traditional fundraising practices and procedures. But of course that's not the case. In fact, the Internet-based fundraising strategy they've adopted -- in essence, turning a campaign contribution into an impulse purchase -- is so radically different from the "investment" fundraising model of previous years that we really can't make any meaningful assumptions about it at this point.

For example, here's a link to John Edwards' contributions page. And if even one person reading this blog were to follow it and throw a few bucks in the till, that would raise serious questions about the entire premise of the Dean/Clark argument outlined above. So, if you're of a mind to, why not just go ahead and start proving them wrong right now?

POSTSCRIPT: When this post first went up, there was a short addendum on the twinning of Dean and Clark. After reading it over, though, I decided it needed to be fleshed out as a separate post. Look for it later today or tomorrow.

UPDATE (1/22): Josh Marshall makes a similar point here.