Now that we are heavily into fundraising here at this site, I think we can also start looking at how
much money we're raising and how.
Musings follow, along with a poll.
I remember earlier days at dkos, when kos pioneered the epatriots idea to have bloggers raise money for the DNC, for which he got praise and some "what? good idea...no nobody thought of it before" feedback from Terry Mac.
Well look how far we've come, baby. Chandler, Herseth, and a slew of blog ads. For an assessment of how those are doing, you might wish to check out this article in Salon (free daypass required if not a subscriber).
Now we are well into choosing the Dailykos8, and we have also put up some very respectable numbers for the DNC ($72,968) and John Kerry ($63,936). Out of the announced Dailykos house races, Morrison has a nice $12,314 and Matsunaka is at at $5,958 (which is at least quite a bit more than break-even if he had run blog-ads--which he didn't). So yay for us.
BUT--there must be a vastly different dynamic going on if Howard Dean and DFA (Dean's not even running for anything, so his supporters don't necessarily have the same incentive to give as they would to Kerry, say) can raise $100,000 over a few days just by asking--and raise it for DFA, not for any particular candidate. So I'm curious--is it simply because so many more people check in at DFA or are on the DFA mailing list? Do people give larger amounts to DFA? Are some contributers who are kos participants simply not counted because they don't use the $.01, or contribute through a different fundraising drive (perhaps at another website, or directly to the candidates). Or are you all cheap bastards?
Well, in any case...feel free to discuss...or talk about who you're giving money to...or take the poll. Oh and give more money! Any number of candidates are worthy, although I thought I'd mention that Joe Hoeffel is running another one of his "add a car to the train" internet fundraisers.