I noticed that yesterday was the first official Wesley Clark for President MeetUp, after months of “Draft Clark” MeetUps. All indications are that the Clark campaign takes these Internet-organized events very seriously, even sending the General himself to the MeetUp in Miami last night.
It got me thinking: Who’s winning the MeetUp primary?
There is, to be sure, no such thing as an official MeetUp primary. Campaigns can start to organize MeetUps and people will either sign up or they won’t. But I think it’s interesting to use these numbers as a measurement of grassroots support. If candidates can recruit supporters to attend these events, it’s indicative of genuine enthusiasm on the part of real people.
Clark has been in the race for less than a month, but his campaign has already enjoyed strong support in this area. As of this morning, 39,200 people had signed up as Clark 2004 attendees. That may not sound like a lot of people, but it’s more than the MeetUp numbers for Kerry, Kucinich, Edwards, Braun, Gephardt, Lieberman, and Sharpton combined.
That being said, Howard Dean is still MeetUp King. His supporters began organizing people through MeetUps as early as January. After 10 months of recruiting, Dean 2004 is up to 122,500 MeetUp members. Not only is that more than any of Dean’s rivals, it’s more than the rest of the Dem field combined and times two.
It’s worth noting, however, that Clark 2004 MeetUp picked up its 30,000th supporter after just three weeks. Dean, on the other hand, didn’t get to 30,000 until June. In other words, Clark generated the same number of grassroots activists to join his campaign’s MeetUps in three weeks that Dean did in six months.
Bush, meanwhile, hasn’t generated a smidgeon of this online support. As of this morning, Bush in 2004 MeetUps had signed up an almost-embarrassing 1,300 people. That’s not only less than John Edwards’ campaign has organized (1,400), it’s even less than the Draft Al Gore in 2004 folks have (1,800).
It’s a reminder that Republicans will always have more money than Democrats, but money can’t buy genuine and motivated grassroots support.