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(EMAILWIRE.COM, November 16, 2008 ) Barack Obama truly is our internet President. His evolution into a groundbreaking political superstar was the product of many sweeping changes in American culture in the past fifty years.

One of these changes is how quickly the internet is becoming a dominant vehicle in the pursuit of attaining huge amounts of campaign fundraising cash so critical to political campaigns here in the United States.

Howard Dean: Early Adopter of Internet Political Fundraising Tactics

In the race for the presidency in 2004 Howard Dean made Americans and the world aware that the web could be a place for effectuating enormous political change via the spread of new communications and fundraising tools. Our President-Elect just ran with them all to great success and with blazing speed to capture the White House.

In fact, Dean was the first Democrat to forego the use of matching funds from the federal government in his campaign. Kerry later did so as well. The reason Dean could abandon government cash? Millions of small donors on the internet helped him build a multi-million dollar warchest.

Barack Obama rode this theme to great success and combined the donations of millions of smaller donors to aggregate staggering amounts of money in the recently finished 2008 race. The total amount of money he raised is said to be in excess of $639 million, with most of that raised via the web.

Weekly Presidential Addresses via YouTube

President-Elect Obama has announced that he will create weekly video clips to share with the American people via YouTube.com (see http://www.Change.gov for a link). He will also make the audio available via radio, both traditional and internet radio, as well.

In Chicago on Friday, November 14, 2008 Obama recorded his first video address at his transition office in Chicago. His transition team is also planning to broadcast many different videos on YouTube to keep the public abreast of developments and policy intentions in more detail than usually available in a shortened media soundbite or story fragment.

Who Helped Pave the Way? – Al Gore’s Legacy

Before Dean’s use of the Internet in political races, the Democrat most in the forefront of people’s minds in terms of the internet, technology, and now global climate change, was Former Vice-President Al Gore. Some people joke that the former VP purportedly claimed he invented the internet. But more so now people respect him for his winning of a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global climate issues and an Academy Award for “An Inconvenient Truth,” his climate change documentary.

Further rebutting those who would joke at Gore’s responsibilities in creating the net is no lesser luminary than Dr. Vinton Cerf, Senior Vice President and Chief Evangelist for Google, a widely acknowledged true ‘father’ of the internet. He has mentioned himself that Al Gore did deserve a lot of credit for his advocacy in the development of net while he was a Senator and Vice-President.

Amazing foundation

What a foundation Gore, Dean, and others laid. Barack Obama certainly seems to be a gracious person, and he seems uniquely aware of the myriad of foundations that stand beneath his towering accomplishment of attaining the United States presidency. By virtue of his new announcement to provide weekly video briefings available via YouTube.com he seems well on his way to being one of the most technically astute presidents in US history.