YouTube or YouLose?

It's changed politics, but the Web has yet to put someone in the White House.

ByABC News
January 8, 2009, 12:21 AM

July 23, 2007 — -- The Internet's ability to energize apathetic voters may be put to the acid test this election season as more candidates look to the Web to build support -- and all-important campaign dollars.

Campaigns began to embrace the Web in a big way four years ago, calling the phenomenon "the future of campaigning" and "transforming politics."

Those phrases were used to describe Howard Dean's 2004 presidential primary bid because of its savvy use of the Internet to mobilize supporters and raise money. Of course, even after encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to donate money, Dean's campaign fizzled after an over-the-top offline rant by the candidate to his supporters. Voters went on to pick John Kerry to be the Democratic candidate.

Those same phrases are now being used to describe tonight's CNN/YouTube debate, Barack Obama's Internet-savvy supporters and Ron Paul's online fundraising machine.

One thing is clear: The Internet is a far more potent force in politics than it was four years ago.

"It's a bigger part of our society," said Andrew Rasiej, a co-founder of the nonpartisan Web site techPresident.com, who thinks that Obama will fare better than Dean for a number of reasons. "A lot of people who worked for Dean and learned for that experience work for Obama now. And there are better tools available now such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. Those are pretty strong examples of how the dynamics have changed."

Tonight's debate will feature all eight Democratic candidates answering voters' questions submitted via video. "This debate offers a real chance to bring new people into the political process," said John G. Palfrey, the director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

"I think what the Internet can do is it can give candidates a much bigger platform, a much quicker platform that would have been possible 20 years ago," said John Hlinko, a grass-roots campaign expert who has worked with DraftObama.org and helped John Edwards with his first podcast. "The big question is when people are watching [tonight's debate], does it resonate?"