While McAuliffe is a lousy spokesman he makes a good administrator

Daily Kos -- McAuliffe is transforming the DNC from a fundraising operation for paying for advertising into an operation that raises funds to create and maintain a campaign infrastructure.

Among the highlights are "Demzilla," a database that started with about 400,000 names but now has the names and contact information of over a million Democratic activists and donors. The DNC has also consolidated voter files from the various state and local party organizations. Supplemented by commercial databases, DataMart has information such as voting history, party registration, responses to voter identification efforts conducted by campaigns, and demographic information on over 150 million voters.

While staying steady over recent years at 14% of the workforce, since 1994 voters from labor families have supported Democrats 2-1 and increased their share of the overall vote from 14% to over 26% in 2000. Much of labor's success came from field activity and direct voter contact, so transferring what has worked among union members to the electorate at large is an exciting prospect.

Working largely under the radar, McAuliffe has actually made the DNC better prepared for a presidential election than it may ever have been. While the innovations in fund raising and communications of Howard Dean's presidential campaign and MoveOn.org have been widely noted, the analogous changes at the DNC have largely escaped attention. So, too, has the ramping up of its 2004 field campaign, which, under the direction of general election strategist Teresa Vilmain, is taking place earlier than ever before. -- Harold Meyerson, American Prospect