[Cross-posted at One Million Strong]

Last weekend, tourists in Las Vegas were greeted by the sight of Ron Paul supporters parading down the Strip, chanting:

We’re not just the Internet.  We’re flesh and blood.

Could this serve as the motto of the 2008 campaign?  The election when online social networks proved that they exist, by out-fundraising traditional party elites, by helping create surging turnout by consituencies long dismissed by party insiders, and by spawning effective grassroots organizing across the country on an unprecendented scale.

It was only November when the highest-paid pollster in the Democratic party, Mark Penn, summed up conventional wisdom by claiming that Obama supporters "look like Facebook" and not "like caucus-goers."

On caucus night, in part through creating a network of well over a hundred high school and over thirty university chapters online and on Facebook, allowing people to pledge to caucus, to contact their peers, to take on leadership roles at their school, and to sign up to volunteer, the Obama campaign won the youth vote by 45 percentage points, in a year in which young voters made up 22% of the electorate.

Ron Paul's supporters, marching through downtown Las Vegas, aren't likely to win on Saturday, nor are they likely to enter the American mainstream, but they've already also proven their point.

Besides employing the largest staff in Nevada, Paul has transcended his early Internet-only stardom: The staunch libertarian appears to have the most eclectic and fervent followers in Nevada of all the Republican candidates.

They said they were happy to get out from behind their computers to march on Saturday. [...] From there, supporters moved to a far-too-large ballroom at the Texas Station casino for a celebration of their hero with music techno-inspired and country-flavored.

For many, it was the first time they were in a room with like-minded Americans...

Make a note:  This scene will be repeated. 

The lessons that young people and libertarians take away from this election will apply to the general electorate in future elections.