Specifically, Obama's Internet fund-raising tactics blindsided the Clinton campaign, Kulbicki said. Rather than relatively few big-money donors, his campaign relied heavily on a large number of people making small donations, primarily over the Internet.

Kulbicki said the Obama campaign's technique is basically the same one that Howard Dean pioneered for his 2004 primary campaign.

I found that interesting because I remember how early on in that campaign, a lot of analysts were writing about how Dean had totally revolutionized campaign fund-raising. Eventually, of course, his campaign went belly up. And the post mortems generally agreed that he relied too much on those small Internet donations.

So in hindsight, maybe it wasn't a miscalculation after all. Maybe it was the right idea a few years too early.

If so, there's somebody else that future campaigners might consider learning from. Before I even say the name, I'll ask you to just take a look at something -- if only because it's really, really cool.

It's a national map from the Huffington Post Website. Just like the Google map, you can zoom in or out to however big or small an area you want to look at, from the entire country to a specific block.

But this map is marked with campaign donor information. Specific donors are marked with helpfully color-coded dots (red or blue, of course), sized according to the amount of the donation. It's hard to describe, but take a look at it. It's the neatest thing since the Slinky was invented, in my opinion.

For some reason, by the way, I can't get this to work as a link off my blog. Until I can talk to the tech folks on Monday and find out just how my staggering technical incompetence is manifesting itself this time, just copy and paste the address below into your browser window, and check it out.

http:/fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/

Done yet? Hell, I was playing with that thing for hours when I first discovered it. Hope I didn't blow your work day.

Anyway, if you head over to York County and start clicking on red dots, you'll make an interesting discovery. A lot of them represent Ron Paul contributions.

Now you know and I know that Paul doesn't a credible shot at the presidency. It's an issue campaign. And you don't generally hear those issues, such as abolishing the IRS and virtually all federal drug laws, from candidates who are genuinely expecting to get elected president.

In light of that, his campaign has done an impressive job establishing a national, grassroots network of supporters. If a bottom-up form of campaign funding is gradually supplanting the top-down model, maybe future campaigns will look to the 2008 Ron Paul effort for ideas.

Scoff if you want. But let's see a show of hands. Who predicted four years ago that the 2008 primary race would turn out anything like this? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Allrighty, then.