Ok, not exactly. But, one of the secrets to Obama’s success has been to take a major page from the Republican playbook, compiling a platinum mailing list of contributors and supporters.

Unlike the Carl Rove variety, this one eschewed snail mail in favor of email. The Democratic candidate whipped Hillary and may do the same to McCain because, in great measure, his machine has mastered the art of everything digi.

When the McCain camp thinks of releasing news, the powers that be turn to the AP, the networks, and USA Today. On the other side of the age/philosophy/political divide, the architects of the new kind of campaign, turn instead to a complex strategy that identifies and addresses voters on specific websites at precise times of the day with highly targeted messages.

There is an interesting interplay here. The Obama camp carefully monitors all manner of Websites and Internet communications and in a legal form of eavesdropping, gathers invaluable intelligence on voter sentiment, opinions, perspectives and trends in thinking on all of the immediate and evolving issues of the day.

Armed with this qualitative and quantitative data, the campaign leadership then develops its digi PR platform, serving up a steady diet of Obama-isms to the bloggers and the news sites its radar keeps track of. It is a continuous loop of gathering and communicating information that can only happen in digi-land.

It’s not that the McCainer’s don’t use the Internet as an important element in their campaign, it’s just that in this aspect of modern politics age does not serve a candidate well. The Obama team has forgotten on any given day more than the McCain-ites ever knew about this form of political blitz.

The knowledge of how to read the voters minds on the Internet and then use this to develop a continuous stream of messaging reminds me of what a Fox tv producer recently ranted about to me:

“Most PR people fail to do their homework. They are just damn lazy. They send me pitches for stories my shows would never run.

“I feel like screaming at them, watch us just once. Just once.”

By “reading” the Internet and then knowing the ideal messages and where to place them, PR people, marketers all, can be as effective as the Obama team in building a universe, a loyal community, around your clients’ products and services.