Howard Dean Using The Internet To Take Campaign to the People
CAFFERTY: Howard Dean, might be the most popular presidential candidate we've never heard of. Former Democratic governor of Vermont, gets major ink this week in American's biggest news magazines. He's on the cover of "News Week" the cover of "Time." It doesn't get any better than that, when he is one in a field of nine. Hey that rhymes. He's attracting attention for the power of his grass roots campaign and the role of the Internet in boosting his popularity. All from that from a man not so many months ago couldn't get arrested, never mind elected. It remains to see if he'll get elected. For more where Dean's coming from and how he got where he is, we are joined from Los Angeles by CNN's senior political analyst, Bill Schneider. A cubby of Democrats, Bill, very few getting traction at all and suddenly Howard Dean is being noticed. How come?</s>WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Anger in single word. Fury among Democrats at George Bush. And they look at this field of nine contenders, and Howard Dean is the only one that expresses that anger that Bush is far more right wing than anyone expected, when he described himself as a compassionate conservative. Dean was the first one and loudest one to condemn the Iraq war. In fact there are four Democrats in the race who supported the war resolution back in October. He opposes the tax cuts. And he is very much in your face with George Bush. A lot of the Democrats who are supporting Howard Dean say that's what we need. We need a tough fighter. We don't need another Al Gore.</s>CAFFERTY: But President Bush is a pretty popular man, and the poll numbers show that. The electorate likes him, and if Howard Dean ran against him today. He'd get run out of town on a rail.</s>SCHNEIDER: That's true. A lot of Democrats are nervous about this, because that anger, that I just described, is not felt by most voters. It is felt by an awful lot of Democrats. And there are other Democrats and a lot of voters are concerned that if the turns out Dean vs. Bush, Dean will turn it into a referendum refighting the war in Iraq, which is a war that the United States has supposed to have won. Or even more of a problem, Dean, signed a gay civil union bill in Vermont, the only state to do that. It could be a referendum on gay marriage or referendum on Bush's tax cuts which are pretty popular. Those are not issues Iraq, tax cuts, and gay marriage, that the party think it can win on.</s>CAFFERTY: Bill, how liberal is Dean or is it just a matter of the Republicans calling him liberal. And if in fact he is very liberal, isn't it true that he could galvanize one part of the Democratic party and make it a certainty they would loose sort of a la George McGovern.</s>SCHNEIDER: A lot of people compare him to George McGovern. His own supporters call him John McCain, this is our McCain. And I have been to Dean meet-ups and they come up to me all the time -- his supporters don't describe us as radical liberals, that's not it. We are not Goerge McGovern. John McCain had a very good relationship with the press, Howard Dean does not. He's in your face even with reporters. Is he that liberal? He is liberal on gay civil unions, and very much opposed to the war on Iraq, but on fiscal issues, he describes himself as a moderate. And in Vermont terms, whatever that mean, he's a moderate in Vermont, which is to say he stood up to a lot of the liberal activists who seem proliferate up there in the green mountains. But he is for a balanced budget, and calls himself a fiscal conservative. That combination, socially liberal, fiscally conservative fits the base of his support very well. The base of his support is upscale. Among people with postgraduate degrees which is about one-eighth of the electorate. Dean does well. Those are the old Jean McCarthy, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley supporters, usually described as the left. But it is a based in the Democratic party. It's the wired left and they are coming out for Howard Dean.</s>CAFFERTY: If he is watching, I bet he is cringing with all those names you just read off in conjunction with his. I bet that's not what he wants to hear at all. Bill, thank you, appreciate it. CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider joining us on IN THE MONEY from Los Angeles California. The Internet is playing a crucial part in Dean's campaign. It's just not a conduit for building support either. It's also away to raise money. For more about political contributions over the Web, we are joined from San Francisco by Oliver Muoto of PayDemocracy. That is a for-profit Internet start-up which allows people to pool small donations on-line to help political causes. Welcome to IN THE MONEY, it's nice to have you with us.</s>OLIVER MUOTO, PAYDEMOCRACY: Thank you very.</s>CAFFERTY: Tell me how the Internet is changing the whole field of campaign finance.</s>MUOTO: Well, the Internet is changing in two big ways, one from an information perspective. Our society has developed an appetite for real-time information. An online campaigning allows you to do just that. Someone describes the Dean campaign as being a bit like a reality show. You have immediate access to what a candidate is doing how much money they are raising. So, that's an important aspect of online campaigning. I think, the second component is the ability to have a one-way, or a two-way discussion on-line. And Dean has very much embraced Internet technology and has gone out to reach supporters in a way that is meaningful to them. So that's very much from an information perspective. I think from a money perspective. I think the Internet makes raising money easier and a lot less expensive. I think Dean has demonstrated this with his Internet drive.</s>LISOVICZ: And PayDemocracy is a for-profit operation. So First of all, Oliver, congratulations for surviving the bursting of the Internet bubble. Because you are a veteran of Silicon Valley. But where do you see this going, ultimately. Because we just had our senior political correspondent saying that it's really the elite, the highly educated, somewhat affluent voters who are really going after Dean. I mean, it's not senior citizens who are voting online, do you see this becoming a democratic way of voting with your paycheck?</s>MUOTO: I definitely think so. I think the Iowa Utilities Commission did a survey and found that in Iowa, 68 percent of rural and urban areas have access to broadband Internet. So there's definitely Internet access out there. People are going online. And the Internet is a medium that allows you to reach a much broader support base. And I think that's why Dean is having some success at a grassroots level, because he is one of the few using the Internet effectively to reach that audience. I think that with more and more people online today than ever before, you will see more politicians embrace the Internet in the same way that Kennedy introduced a TV era of politics. I believe Dean has introduced the Internet era of politics.</s>CAFFERTY: Oliver, why don't you take a minute, and describe to us how your company works. I mean it's the Web site is paysdemocracy.com. I mean, tell us about it.</s>MUOTO: Thanks for asking. At PayDemocracy, we believe that contributions are the life blood of online lobbying. And what we have done is we have built a site that allows people to collect or aggregate small contributions to create significantly larger contributions. So anyone can go to the site and either create a campaign around an issue or a cause or a politician they feel strongly about or they can donate a small amount of money to any of the existing campaigns, we are very much about empowering people and getting them involved it. If you lok at the numbers, in the 2000 election, only 600 thousand people gave any amount. Six hundred thousand individuals of voting age gave any amount to the presidential primaries. That represents one-third of 1 percent of the voting age population. So we are talking about 99.6 percent of the population who, for some reason, did not feel they needed or wanted to contribute any amount of money. And we are trying to change that.</s>CAFFERTY: Oliver, how much, if I send a check for $100 to your Web site, how much do you take?</s>MUOTO: We take, I believe, 5.25 percent of that.</s>CAFFERTY: You believe or you know.</s>MUOTO: I know.</s>CAFFERTY: So you take 5 percent. If I am passionate about a political issue or a candidate. And I only have a little money to spend, why wouldn't I put it in an envelope and send it to them? Instead of them getting 95% of the meager amount that I have to give. Nothing against your Web site, but why wouldn't I if I have limited resources, just contribute directly.</s>MUOTO: First of all that 5.25 percent is significantly less than what most professional fund raisers charge for raising money for candidates. All we do is make that very transparent. Paydemocracy is all about creating transparency online The second point is that it's actually rather expensive to go after small donations. It costs about 50 cents for every dollar raised to go after small political contributions. So if we are talking about, you know, that much money, to go after supporters using traditional mechanisms, the Internet, I believe, makes it a lot more cost-effective to go after that part of the population and raise those small donations.</s>LISOVICZ: Certainly Howard Dean's supporters have taken to the Internet in droves. Oliver, it's worked nicely for you at paydemocracy.com. Thanks for joining us.</s>MUOTO: Thanks you very much. It's been a pleasure.</s>LISOVICZ: Up ahead, GE's power play with the company on a buying spree, we will look at whether investors foot the bill. Plus extra credit: find out why students are getting in the hole before getting out of school. And California scheming. Famous names, and familiar faces are in a jam-packed race for California governor. We can't make this stuff up. Find out which stars are ready to trade tinsel town for the stick of Sacramento.