While the press was jumping on Sen. Barak Obama’s San Francisco "Bittergate" remark about low income embittered white votes in Pennsylvania (and presumably elsewhere) clinging to their religious faith or guns (or both), political insiders noticed a more critical observation Obama made. David All of RepublicanTech.com quotes Obama (with thanks to Chris Chiasson) as follows:

"I want to make a point about fund raising because I think it is illustrative of what else is going on. We raised 55 million dollars last month. . . . I'm sorry. We raised 55 million in February; we raised 40 million that last month. Now, these are gaudy numbers. But, what's interesting is not the amount raised. 90% of what we raised came over the Internet. 50% were for $50 or less. Our average donation is less than $100.

"Now, essentially what we've done is we've created a parallel public financing system. That using the Internet and mobilizing people all across the country - over 1.3 million donors - we've created a system where ordinary people can actually finance, can fuel, a campaign at the highest levels.

"It's the same way that we've competed organizationally. We didn't have all the fancy endorsements early on . . . And yet, we were able to compete everywhere.

"Why is that? Essentially, groups formed themselves using technology. We have an Open Source system. For people to just grab onto good ideas. They start organizing their neighbors, organizing their friends. And, next thing you knew, we'd built the best political organization in the country. And that's what we have. I mean, we have the best national political organization that anybody has seen in a generation."

To date, Obama has raised $235 million (and has $51 million cash on hand) based on the latest Federal Election Commission filings. McCain, on the other hand, raised $76 million and has only $11 million cash on hand. According to the Campaign Finance Institute, 45% of Obama’s contributors donated $200 or less, while only 23% of McCain’s donors gave $200 or less. Although there is no breakdown in FEC reported numbers between online contributors and those who give by snail mail, the smart money is that the overwhelming majority of $200 or less contributors are also the ones who give online.

Parenthetically, if you want a another dose of bad news, when lumping all of the Democratic Presidential and Congressional candidates, party committees, PACs and identifiable 527s, the Democrats have raised since January 1, 2007 through March 31, 2008 $1 billion (yes "b" as in billion) while the Grand Old Party only 59% of that, $638 million. The Democrats appear to have $954 million cash on hand as of March 31st, while the Republicans have only 30% of that sum, a measly $292 million.

If we use the benchmark that online contributors are usually those who give $200 or less, the Democrats have over 2 million online donors, the GOP only 893,000 online contributors, or less than half of the Democrats’ total. And Obama isn’t alone. The Democrats’ principal online entity, MoveOn.org has 699,000 donors (the last reported figure) and this is on top of their reported 3.2 million member activists.

Two million donors also equates into the same number of voters. Unless you’re a Washington lobbyist, you usually don’t give money to a candidate unless you intend to vote for him.

Today, the Republicans have absolutely no answer to these numbers of Obama online contributors or MoveOn supporters. But you will want to keep in the loop with this column on Townhall.com. Tomorrow is another day.