Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece on the rising strength of small dollar donors in politics. This is a trend I've called the Long Tail of politics.

The recent flood of Internet donations that has helped pump 2008 presidential campaign coffers to highs also is accomplishing what Watergate-era campaign-finance regulations set out to do: dilute the influence of special interests and wealthy donors.

The main beneficiaries of the boom in small donors are Democratic contenders Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both were expected to file reports with the Federal Election Commission Thursday night detailing their February fund raising. The Obama campaign has released numbers indicating the Illinois senator would report raising about $55 million in February, a one-month record for a primary candidate. About 90% of the total came from donors who gave in increments of $100 or less.

I'm quoted twice in the piece:

Political strategists are trying to replicate the Obama model. David All, a Republican political consultant, admired how the campaign last year chose five small donors to have dinner with Sen. Obama, and then made a video about each one and posted them to the Obama campaign Web site. "It told their story, and Barack Obama was merely the thread that connected them all," Mr. All said. "What he's doing is creating a community, and this community is spreading his message virally" by word of mouth and emails to friends, he said.

And:

Internet giving at the congressional level also is spreading, albeit more slowly. Web sites such as ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democrats, let donors contribute to individual candidates. ActBlue has directed more than $14 million to federal Democratic candidates this election cycle, compared with $16 million for the 2006 congressional elections.

Mr. All, the Republican consultant, started a rival site last October called SlateCard.com. It has raised just $300,000. "What I'm finding is a lot of Republican campaigns are just hiring college kids or using their son who has a Facebook account," said the 28-year-old Mr. All. "They don't understand what this is all about."