After predicting that he would finish "dead last in fund-raising" during the 2004 presidential election race, Howard Dean raised tens of millions of dollars, including fifteen million between July and September 2003, smashing, by more than four million dollars, a single-quarter Democratic record set by Clinton in 1995.

"Late in 2002, when Dean complained about his chronic shortage of funds, [campaign manager Joe Trippi] proposed using the Internet to build a base of supporters. As they discussed how the process might work, one of Dean's questions was 'What's a blog?' In Vermont, Dean's staff regarded him as a Luddite. But, listening to Trippi, he grasped the idea of a blog as a running political-debate forum, with an abundantly flexible capacity to receive and broadcast ideas and opinions, and suddenly Dean -- who didn't use a computer until 1998 and who had refused to have a government e-mail address -- was a technophile."

[Ironically, as Governor of Vermont Dean had his home number listed in the Burlington telephone directory.]