Q3 has ended, and Obama campaign is again announcing dramatic numbers. As has been their MO from the beginning, they are leading not with dollar amounts, but with people amounts. Obama is reporting over 500,000 contributions from over 350,000 unique individuals.
This will lead, no doubt, to further conversation about the "Obama Paradox" - why, with these kinds of numbers, aren't his poll numbers higher? I think the answer is pretty simple, myself. Obama is getting a huge return on his poll numbers. More of the people who say they would vote for him take the additional step of committing tangible support -- far more than with any other candidate on either side.
That actually gives us the real Obama Paradox: the "big money" candidate who also has the largest grassroots donor base. And it gives is the Obama Unknown: what does this mean for his ability to win the nomination?
I'm not here to give you the pollyana claim that the polls don't matter, he's a lock to win because they aren't capturing cell phone numbers, or they are only based on name recognition, or I have some other poll to counter your poll. You get enough of that on this site.
In fact, I truly think the Obama Unknown is a legitimate unknown. Because we've never seen this before. Dean? He created the model, but he never hit donor numbers on this scale. He collected a lot of e-mail addresses, but got fewer people to take the tangible step of participating in some way. And Obama has improved on the model. He is, after all, a former community organizer. So he indeed has a plan to tap into this support, by training volunteers at Camp Obama, and by establishing a formal campaign structure designed to plug volunteers in to specific roles at the neighborhood and precinct level.
So what we have is an unprecedented number of people who "own" the campaign. An unprecedented number of small dollar donors, who can be tapped again. And who, having taken the tangible step of making a donation, are that much more likely to encourage their friends and neighbors to vote Obama, to sign up for a phonebank or canvass, or simply to hold onto Obama as their first choice through the inevitable ups and downs of a primary campaign.
I can speculate that this huge return on his current poll numbers yields a long-term strategic advantage to Obama over the other candidates. (This recent Jennifer Clare diary makes a similar point). That we are several months away from voting in the early states and the blockbuster Feb. 5 voting. That having a huge network of committed supporters can make the difference in caucus states, where organization matters most. And that caucus success in turn, combined with the bodies on the ground to do GOTV, will make the difference in the primary states early in the calendar. So I don't spend time worrying about whether the polls are catching young people with cell phones. That isn't going to be enough to make up 20 points. 350,000 people who are already voting with their dollars? That might.
But this is all speculation. It's an unknown. We've never been here before.
We also have a candidate who is accountable to 350,000 individual contributors, many of whom are giving at the below $200 level. And no, they aren't just buying t-shirts - that myth has been thoroughly debunked:
Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer says that people buying campaign paraphernalia (mostly t-shirts) account for "less than 1% of our donors"--or 2,580 out of the total donor base of 258,000. He also contends that more than half of those who bought items like t-shirts (which puts you on their e-mail list) subsequently gave to the campaign in the traditional way.
I can speculate that this will fundamentally color every aspect of this campaign and the candidate. That those who complain that Obama raising big $$ is just another example of how corrupt our national politics is might be missing the big grassroots presence in this story. That this is as close as private financing comes to the values that underlie a public financing model. And that we have already seen this empower the candidate to take unconventional positions on foreign policy, to continue making voting rights and political accountability signature policy issues in the campaign, and to go in front of big corporate audiences on Wall Street and in Detroit and tell them exactly what they don't want to hear.
But again, this is all speculation. It's an unknown. We've never been here before.
So we'll all watch. Some of us will work. And come mid-January, we will see what it all means. We've never been here before, but it's a pretty exciting place to be.
Disclosure: I am a volunteer with the Obama campaign in California. I do not vet my diaries in any way with the campaign. The ideas in them and all the words are my own.