Matt Bai, NY Times writer + author of “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics", wrote a quick piece in the magazine this week on how the current candidates have taken the wrong lessons from the Dean campaign's use of the Internet. He hits upon the key elements that we've been going on and on about: engaging people today happens best when you let them take control.

A great example of this that Matt references is how a group of Ron Paul supporters that had nothing to do with the campaign, organized an online fund-raiser on Guy Fawkes Day, bringing in more than $4 million and 21,000 new contributors in a single day — the largest 24-hour haul of any Republican candidate to date.

Here are some of the great quotes:

In the new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses

Such developments probably came as no surprise to many in the business world, who understood years ago that the Web represented not simply another mass medium to be gamed but also a fundamental shift in the once static relationship between producer and consumer. It is by nature a participatory medium, in which customers demand a more personal stake in the products they consume.