By Larry Rasky, Chairman, Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications; Former Biden Press Secretary

In the waning days of the campaign leading up to the Iowa caucuses in January, credible political blogs were filled with speculation on the possibility of a Caucus Day surprise by Senator Joe Biden. Nobody expected us to beat Barack or Hillary, but a surprising third or solid fourth would not have shocked anyone.

Our crowds were strong in that last week, averaging around 400 to 500 people. But compared to Senator Obama's 10,000-strong rallies, the Biden crowds by themselves could not have convinced the skeptical DC political press to buy into our election eve mirage.

No, the seeds of our surprise were sewn in the digital wilderness during the autumn doldrums of the Iowa campaign. It was big news when the Storm Lake Times (Storm Lake, Iowa, population 10,076) made the first newspaper endorsement of the campaign season on October 20th, 2007. And it was not just big news in Storm Lake. When The Times endorsed Joe Biden (and not the big three—can you believe John Edwards was one of them?) the Google alerts of every political reporter in America went off.

And when Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times wrote about the endorsement of Biden by the Storm Lake Times on his campaign blog, every political activist in Iowa and elsewhere read it on their Blackberry.

When you look at a story on your Blackberry, logos and bylines tend to disappear. You cannot tell the difference between The New York Times and the Storm Lake Times on a two-inch screen. In the digital universe, information is democratized. And in the compressed and busy time of a political campaign, any new piece of information can have an instant impact.

The Times was not the only Biden endorsement. Over the course of six months, Joe Biden was endorsed by a dozen state representatives, each one sparking a mass campaign email and ensuing coverage. Through the magic of "The Fix," Chris Cillizza's indispensible blog on washingtonpost.com (by far the best adaption of modern technology in the news business), every political junkie in America knew Biden was competitive with the top tier in the Iowa endorsement race.

But it wasn't just the blogs and Blackberries. One of the best things about political campaigns is the egalitarian nature of the operation. With so little time and so much to do, age and seniority go out the window. All you look for are live bodies who can step up, take responsibility and get the job done.

Such moments lead to the elevation of youth and, in this campaign (and not just Biden's) the empowerment of kids who could deploy the latest technology in ways heretofore unimagined.

Early on, our star-studded Internet team of Eric Carbone, Joel Meister and Tim Westimer, developed a You-Tube application called "Head-to-Head," that repurposed debate video in almost-real time to showcase Joe Biden's answers versus those of his opponents. One of the reasons Senator Obama selected Senator Biden was because he was routinely declared the winner of a dozen televised debates.

The best moment of the Biden campaign came when NBC's Brian Williams asked a snippy question about whether Biden felt confident he could restrain his verbal proclivities. Biden's one-word answer—Yes!—became an instant Internet classic and spawned a number of home-made You-Tube ads accentuating the theme, "Joe Biden—Yes."

But not all You-Tube videos are harmless. At last count, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's verbal excursions had been watched over ten million times on "The Tube." The digital video gods giveth and they taketh away.

For what it's worth, it does not appear to me that, at least so far, new media is playing as big a role in the general election as it did in the primaries. Even online fundraising is down.

Perhaps it's battle fatigue and perhaps it's just that all the Internet users have already made up their mind. Or, perhaps, like the World Series and Monday Night Football, most Americans still want the old tube on to gather the family for a look at the finalists.

Whatever the case, my guess is that when the debates come, the campaigns will find a way to use YouTube to magnify the gaffes somebody made on the old tube and demonstrate again why politics has forever changed.