Three and a half hours after John McCain's campaign manager sent out an online fundraising email calling Barack Obama "elitist," Obama's campaign manager has sent out a fundraising email of his own. Entitled, "Who's Out of Touch?" the solicitation from campaign manager David Plouffe seeks to highlight Obama's humble upbringing, while providing several links to the campaign's online fundraising page:

Barack Obama's own life and story are reflected in the character of this grassroots campaign. He was raised by a single mother with help from his grandparents. He has a family he loves, not long ago finished paying off his student loans, and he's doing what he can to help change this country.

Meanwhile, John Cole says the Clinton campaign's effort to paint Obama as elitist are not working:

So, in case you are keeping score, yes, American voters are dumb enough to vote for Bush twice (and I include myself in that number, sadly). They are not, however, dumb enough to sit around and listen to an Ivy League educated lawyer who has spent all but two of the last 40 years living in a Governor’s mansion, the White House, and a NY mansion and who made 110 million over the past six years call someone else elitist.

On the same day Democrats and bloggers are accusing the McCain campaign of violating campaign finance laws, John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sent out an email to supporters focusing on Barack Obama's comments over the weekend about "bitter" voters in small town America. The email at first appears to simply contrast McCain's views with Obama's, but near the end goes into the online fundraising pitch:

If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions - Senator Obama's liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain's faith in the small town values that continue to make America great. John McCain will not forget them or write them off. Neither should Barack Obama.

We are up against a large fundraising hurdle if Barack Obama is the nominee and we need your help now. Even before the general election begins, the differences are clear, we must do everything we can to make sure these beliefs don't make it into the White House.

In a new email sent to Hillary Clinton supporters, Bill Clinton emphasizes the campaign's need to overcome Barack Obama's significant fundraising lead. In what may be a sign of the Clinton camp's financial woes, the former president is asking supporters to contribute as little as $5 (emphasis theirs):

Despite the spirited support from Hillary's best supporters, including you, we are still being outraised and outspent by the Obama campaign. He outspent us by more than $10 million in February alone. Let's close the gap so Hillary can win in Pennsylvania, keep on winning, and be our next president.

Any donation, even as little as $5, can make a difference in this campaign. If you haven't given online yet, now is the time.

Just returned from an interesting panel discussion hosted by the New Democrat Network, featuring Joe Trippi, Hotline Editor-in-Chief Amy Walter, and NDNers Simon Rosenberg and Andres Ramirez. The panel discussed emerging trends in 2008, the "collapse of the conservative brand," and the rise of Hispanic voters. But they also got into some interesting points about the increasing role of technology in campaigns.

To summarize, Trippi said what he and Howard Dean started in 2004 with the netroots has come to fruition with Barack Obama's campaign, which he called, "A move from top down media ... to bottom up technology." Trippi used the comparison repeatedly, describing Hillary Clinton's campaign as, "the best top down campaign, the strongest one our party ever put together."

He also noted that because of the differences in online and traditional fundraising that despite Obama raising significantly more more than Clinton, 90% of Clinton's donors had already maxed-out their individual contributions, versus only 3% for Obama's supporters.

Trippi also explained how he thought the Clinton campaign could have taken the reins and "won a change campaign from the bottom," by using Clinton's gender to defuse notions that hers was the establishment campaign. Comparing his own role in the Dean campaign to that Obama's, he said, "We were like the Wright Brothers, and now, four years later, they are landing on the moon."

Walter didn't entirely disagree with Trippi's assessment, but cautioned, "The way Obama has run his primary is not necessarily how he'll run his general election.

For his part, Rosenberg described the differences in how the Democrats and Republicans are using technology in this election to, "the difference between using conventional weapons and nuclear weapons."

Patrick Ruffini, now a Romney supporter, looks at how a cash-strapped John McCain has become the Republican frontrunner while investing half the money expected from a potential nominee. Ruffini offers some advice to future candidates and campaign analysts:

If he wins, John McCain will have spent roughly $40 million to secure the nomination against two vastly better funded opponents. That is a far cry from the conventional wisdom that it would take $100 million to compete.

...

I hope that future candidates and political operatives learn the right lessons from this. Knowing that McCain was able to (probably) win the nomination on half the money they said it would take, let’s keep those 2011 Q1 (or 2010 Q4?) numbers in perspective, won’t we? And let’s truly understand online not as another layer on top of the traditional campaign, but as an opportunity to change the equation, protecting candidates from unreliable, time-consuming, and costly fundraising practices from the past.