The Surge that Took Down the Red Cross
By Joe Campbell
November 13th, 2008
Evan Thomas of Newsweek has written up an excellent series of seven articles from the research of a team of reporters given behind-the-scenes access to the McCain and Obama campaigns on the condition that they not publish anything until after the election. At the end of the fourth article, he explains an incident that demonstrates the sheer organizing power of the Obama operation:
At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We've been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it.
The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.
Tags: Evan Thomas, Newsweek, Red Cross