Perhaps, but maybe it just means that a bunch of rich guys in Manhattan and north Jersey like Bill Bradley. Jesse Ventura won the governorship of Minnesota with a total paid campaign staff of two people. He used his personality, his notoriety and his libertarian philosophy to knock off well-funded establishment candidates. Ventura used his website to inform and engage potential voters. TV ads get more and more expensive, even as they become less effective, so candidates have to raise larger and larger sums to leave a footprint.
Candidates can reach people online for a fraction of what they spend on the air.
And it's much less expensive to create a website than a polished TV ad. The Internet, with its low overhead and global reach, has allowed upstarts in virtually every industry to challenge well-funded incumbents. We've already seen the phenomenon in political reporting. Matt Drudge, a guy with a computer and a couple of telephone lines, briefly became the most powerful force in the news media. To talk back to James Freeman, click here .