Something's stirring across the Pond. It's not the growing feeling that George Bush might lose the election, following Papa into well-upholstered obscurity after 'winning' a Middle-Eastern war. Nor is it General Wesley Clarke's late entry into the presidential race. No, the really interesting development is the amazing campaign of Howard Dean, the former Governor of Vermont, which is providing our first glimpses of what an internet-powered political campaign might be like.
Governor Dean was, until recently, a nobody - a medic who came late to politics and was propelled in to the governorship of a small New England state on the death ofhis predecessor.
In May last year, he announced his candidacy for the presidency. The media (and political) establishments yawned politely and looked the other way. The few commentators who bothered to investigate pronounced him another George McGovern - that is to say an unelectable liberal who would do more harm than good to the Democratic cause.
While the mainstream media looked the other way, Dean spent much of 2002 criss-crossing the US, canvassing opinion and seeking support. Unlike the other early Democrat hopefuls, he reckoned that the best way to proceed was to tackle the Bush junta head-on and so he came out with vocal opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the spiralling federal budget deficit.
He has condemned Attorney General John Ashcroft and his odious 'patriot' and 'victory' acts, and called for Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to be removed from office. And from being initially considered a long shot in a crowded field, by the summer of 2003 Dean had become one of the Democrat's top contenders.
And it began to show in the campaign contributions: between April and June of this year, for example, he raised $7.6 million (including $3.5m in eight days), far outstripping the other Democratic candidates.
But the most significant thing about Dean is his use of the internet. For most US politicians, the net is a megaphone and a way to raise money. Their websites are grisly mini-portals containing speech transcripts, biographical information, a place to buy T-shirts and campaign buttons, a sign-up box for an email newsletter plus photographs of the candidate's mom, wife, kids and dog - and of course a 'donation' link to a credit-card handling system.
The average political site, in other words, is simply the webbed face of an old-style organisation.
When he embarked on his campaign, however, Dean had neither organisation nor money. All he had was a voice, the guts to challenge the ruling junta - and a campaign manager named Joe Trippi, a techno-junkie with close ties to Silicon Valley and the computer industry.
Trippi had the brilliant idea of harnessing the net to foster the growth of a country-wide virtual organisation of supporters.
He also employed people such as Zephyr Teachout, who understood that a truly networked campaign cannot be centrally directed - it has to concede freedom and initiative to those at the edge of the network, with all the risks that entails.
And guess what? It's working. Seasoned political observers began to observe something startling. Wherever Dean went in the US, large and enthusiastic crowds were waiting for him - the kinds of crowds that the conventional system can only muster after weeks of advance preparation and a large staff on the ground.
Dean had nobody on the ground - nobody save the growing band of enthusiasts co-ordinated by the net. And just to underscore the point, in July this campaign raised more than $500,000 in small net contributions in just a few days.
Compare that with a $2,000-a-plate fundraising lunch with Vice President Dick Cheney the same month which raked in only $300,000.
Like I said, something's stirring. Watch this space.
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