When the final votes are counted, chads inspected, and lawsuits settled, we may look back on the campaign of 2008 and find that, if he is elected, the secret to Obama’s success was a couple of geeks who have headquartered their tech company - Blue State Digital - in the most unlikely of places: Inside The Beltway.

BSD was founded in 2004 by refugees from the ill-fated Howard Dean presidential bid.  Over the last 4 years, they have been busy building online community and fundraising tools, and have found a customer base craving this expertise - from campaigns to causes to corporations.  In fact, founding partner Joe Rospars is currently leading Obama’s digital strategy.  According to a recent BusinessWeek article BSD could play a strategic advisory role in an Obama administration.

Obama’s online fundraising capability has been the stuff of legend.  BSD claims to have to have raised $300 million from over 1 million donors for Obama.  Their case study is being written in real time here.

I’ve decided to invest a little cash into the Obama online juggernaut so that I can get the full Blue State experience.  This morning, I plunked down $100 on the AMEX at barackobama.com and set the machine in motion.

Of course there was the “Thanks for donating” email in my inbox the minute I clicked the pay button.  But more impressive was the web page note I got from Susan L. of Florida, who apparently “matched” my donation.  I was given the opportunity to drop her a note about why I donated as well as to exchange email addresses (too creepy for me).

From there, it was off to my very own home within the Obama community: my.barackobama.com.  I’m immediately struck by the elegant design.  Clean, modern, soothingly san serif through and through.  The site appears to revolve around “Making A Difference”.  Like Whuffie Points from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the site rewards obamakins (obamites? obamanators?) with a reputation based score.  (In my case “1 point” thanks for the donation).

But my reputation can rise!  I can sign up to make calls to influence undecided voters in a neighboring state.  Or I can write a letter to the editor of a Michigan newspaper.  I decided to explore making calls for my buddy Barack.  I’m whisked away to the virtual obama call center.  25 names of undecided New Mexicans have been allocated to my call queue.  Each call I make will gain me prestige in the community, all I have to do is push to talk! (At this point, the author gingerly pushes logout - not wanting to actually do anything to influence the election one way or another).

Sure enough, 10 minutes later I get an email from the New Mexico campaign manager.  He thanks me for making the effort but reminds me that those 25 names have been allocated to me - no one else will get to call them :-(

Gosh, I’m starting to feel bad about dumping out of the program.  And getting all those whuffie points sure would be nice…  I wonder how many I need to collect to redeem them for a night in the Lincoln Bedroom?