Hillary Clinton sure is lucky that she has that money left over from her Senate campaign. Otherwise, her fundraising would look a lot more raggedy next to Brother Obama. I read the news this morning and I wanted to stand up and shout Hallelujah!

I haven’t endorsed any candidate yet and don’t intend to do so for some time. Yet, I can’t help but be proud of Barack Obama’s historic achievement not only for African-Americans but for all Americans. From the Washington Post:

Obama, a first-term Illinois senator who launched his presidential bid with no national fundraising network, raised $24.8 million for the primary campaign during the first quarter, and Clinton (N.Y.) raised $19.1 million, the campaigns reported last night.

Perhaps the greatest advantage for Obama going forward is that fewer than half of his 104,000 contributors “maxed out” for the primary by hitting the $2,300 contribution limit, meaning he can turn to them again for support. Clinton, by contrast, received nearly three-quarters of her haul from those who wrote $2,300 checks and who cannot contribute to her again unless she is the party’s nominee.

About half of Obama’s donors came from online. I am also willing to bet that there is a statistically significant percentage of donors over 75 who have pressed a dollar bill and a piece of hard candy into Barack Obama’s or one of his staffers’ hands. Is anyone tracking that? The pieces of hard candy? I’m proposing a new campaign benchmark.

And he did it with no fundraising network and no political machine to muscle into action. The amount candidates have raised is 4 times of that 8 years ago. The Clintons had better watch out. Is it possible that some steamrolling black history will come to re-define who is really called the first black president?

I like to keep watch over TechPresident.com on the level of online support for the presidential candidates. . When I show the overwhelming number of MySpace friends and YouTube views for Obama vs Clinton (MySpace: 102,163 vs 35,542/YouTube: 2,758,781 vs 110,229), people have said to me: “oh that’s just the young people. It’s the money that counts and the money is going to come from older people who aren’t reflected in those online numbers. And it’s still so early.” Read: “crazy dirty internet hippies, teenagers and negroes like Obama, but ‘serious’, older people will give their money elsewhere. Obama is all hype.” Hmph, looks like the conventional wisdom was wrong about that too.

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