Prior to the appearance of Demzilla, the Democratic Party database reportedly contained about 70,000 names, an extremely low number considering the 50 million who voted for Al Gore in 2000.

The Republicans had a similar database, dubbed The Voter Vault. Demzilla is no longer in use, having been replaced by the VoteBuilder system in 2006.

That ever so brilliant neoconservative, Rush Limbaugh, has “stooped” to calling Jimmy Carter a hemorrhoid. Remember that no matter what you think about Jimmy Carter’s politics and his performance as President, Carter is someone who’s usually respected.

After all, he’s had a major focus on and a great impact on society through his humanitarian works like Habitat for Humanity since his exit from politics. This isn’t a guy who’s been sitting on its hands since his retirement from politics. He also isn’t averse to giving thoughtful discourse when asked.

So you might be surprised that Rush picked on such a “pure” target. Rush had to have known he was going to incite outrage.

Pretty smart move, don’t you think? (Hold on; keep reading.)

Jimmy Carter’s not necessarily right, either, but…

Now, let’s set the record straight. I don’t necessarily agree with Jimmy Carter that all opposition to Barack Obama is because he’s an African-American. To quote Carter directly, he said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.” In fact, we’ve got a really politically diverse country here. Obama is a Democrat with a lot of ideas that Republicans (and independents, and some Democrats, too) don’t agree with. That’s plenty of reason to foster that opposition and that animosity. Is there prejudice and racism involved in SOME of that opposition, too? Sure. But not all of it, or even an “overwhelming majority” of it. That’s where I disagree with Carter.

Rush’s perfect opportunity to “bombast”

That said, I don’t think that’s why Limbaugh took this opportunity to bombast everyone with his own “point of view” on Carter.

Why pick on Jimmy Carter?

Perfect target to get himself some more press. It’s true; racism still exists. Today, it’s an undercurrent in society instead of overt. It’s not politically correct anymore to declare oneself a racist, so the prejudice is much more subtle. I also know that the “race card” does get played sometimes; that is, someone gets called racist when they’re not. However, I don’t think Obama has remotely done anything to play the race card, and in fact has been very, very careful not to.

Is Rush “outrageous” deliberately?

Could it be true that Rush is outrageous deliberately? Maybe he is, and maybe that’s precisely the point. In other words, I’m not surprised that Limbaugh has chosen Carter as his target to further inflame an already sensitive subject, racism. Limbaugh is a guy who makes his living and his name by being inflammatory and by deliberately provoking people. (Never mind what he really thinks, since that’s not his point — although he probably does believe in most of this stuff he spouts.) This is the same guy who decided that it was funny to have the song Barack the Magic Negro on his show. Infantile, low-lying “humor,” to be sure.

But think about this for a minute. This is a guy who’s really raking in the dough simply by being as outrageous as he possibly can, while still getting away with it. Do you really think his followers would listen to him if he didn’t make such outrageous claims? What would his sponsors say if he suddenly quit doing that? He would quit raking in the dough, and of course, this greedy puss can’t have that. (Lest you think this is really outrageous behavior on his part and out of character, think again. He does it all the time. This is the same guy who claimed that Michael J. Fox was “acting” his Parkinson’s symptoms when Fox did a commercial in support of stem cell research a few years back and was clearly struggling to control his movements. AFTER he accused Fox of “faking it,” Limbaugh “sort of” backpedaled, but didn’t really apologize, when it was clear that people were offended by his smack against Fox. But of course, that just gave him more press, which was precisely the point, in my opinion.)

Back to the point at hand, which is that Rush Limbaugh called one of the most respected ex-politicians of our time a “hemorrhoid,” based upon Carter’s comment that “the overwhelming majority” of Obama’s opposition is against him simply because he is a black man — and perhaps because he is the first elected black president. That’s overstating it a bit, in my opinion, but is based on some truth.

I don’t think Limbaugh attacked Carter because he might have “overstated” things. Nor do I think this attack makes Rush a racist, not necessarily. He might be, but the biggest point of all of this is that this is simply a guy who wants to exploit his audience for monetary gain. He has certainly done that. Take Rush in that spirit, and he’s suddenly someone who’s pathetic and greedy, but not much else.

With Demzilla came the true power of knowledge. Each of the 150 million plus names in the database contained upwards of 200-400 bits of information. Race, gender, email address, family member names were all entered into the system. The GOP has a similar system, The Voter Vault.

Since Demzilla, the Democrats have moved on to other, bigger and presumably better data mining systems, but it all started with Demzilla.

After the 2000 elections, the Democratic party began developing its first sophisticated database called Demzilla. This program was fully in place by the 2004 election season, and allowed them to collect and analyze all kinds of information on voters, everything from standard biographical information such as race, gender, etc. to more personal data such as your email address.

The suburban mom in Pennsylvania received very different Democratic Party advertisements than the businesswoman from Detroit in 2004, and that’s thanks to Demzilla.

Demzilla made it possible for fundraising efforts to be made by the flip of a virtual rolodex, and made targeted advertising much more effective by analyzing demographics in a more sophisticated manner.