Joshua Levy's blog

Daily Digest: McCain's Online Drubbing

2008-05-30T12:35:59-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

John McCain is “taking a serious drubbing” on YouTube, writes the Los Angeles’ Times’ James Rainey, who cites video after video on YouTube that attack McCain for being less than a straight-talker. “Six of the top 10 videos returned by a ‘John McCain’ YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three,” Rainey writes. Ouch. We continue to ask: where is the voter-generated video in support of McCain?
In his invaluable weekly report from across the political blogosphere, the Blogometer’s Ian Faerstein analyzes the fallout from Barack Obama’s “gaffe” in which Obama said that his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz (in fact, his great-uncle helped liberate Buchenwald). The story broke on the conservative blog Ace of Spades HQ and quickly gained traction among conservative blogs, eventually leading to a retraction from Obama. But Obama’s considerable army of online supporters pushed back, and has far as we can tell the story has fizzled.
Writing at Future Majority, blogger alicecheshirecat takes stock of the outdated Franking Rules that limit the outreach Members of Congress can make to their constituents. She suggests that the Hill get hip to wikis, which could help usher in a new wave of government-citizen interaction. When will Congress enter the 21st Century?
Here’s a reminder that if you live in New York it’s your duty to go to the Forum on Participation and Politics Online next Wednesday, June 4, at 6pm, at the NYU Law School. It’s sponsored by the good folks behind OneWebDay and will feature a knockout panel, including techPresident’s Andrew Rasiej and Zephyr Teachout and citizen journalism guru Jay Rosen, and it will be moderated by PdF’s Allison Fine. Go here for more details.
A personal/professional note: today is my last full day as associate editor at techPresident and Personal Democracy Forum. My good friend and colleague Nancy Scola will be taking over the Daily Digest baton for the next few months. I’m confident that this daily roundup of snark, geekiness, and tech/politics obsession will be safe, and even more informative, in her hands. As for me, I’m moving on to Change.org, where I’ll be the managing editor of a social issue blog network that will launch later this summer. It’s an exciting move, but my departure from PdF is bittersweet; I love these guys. Expect to see me poking my head in from time to time.

Kids, please be nice to Nancy and continue to send your tips, suggestions, and love to techpres AT personaldemocracy DOT com or to Nancy at nancy AT personaldemocracy DOT com.

The Candidates on the Web

Newt Gingrich is becoming quite the online presence. Yesterday on The Next Right Patrick Ruffini reported that Gingrich’s American Solutions organization had gathered more than 100,000 signatures in 48 hours on a petition for domestic oil exploration. Ruffini is excited about the attention the petition’s getting, but points out that the long-term value of these petitions lies in the MoveOn-like ability to “galvanize activists around a cause using viral marketing.” So far, the right hasn’t been so good at that part. Maybe this is a turning point.

In Case You Missed It…

We've reposted a first-person account from Bruce Wilson of the making of the viral video of Pastor John Hagee that precipitated Senator John McCain's decision to renounce Hagee's endorsement of his candidacy. Wilson is a co-founder of the E Pluribus Media blogger collective.

In this week’s favorite political videos, the Democratic candidates show their inner Puerto Rican-ness by dancing in the streets, drinking the local beer, and speaking accented Spanish. We’ll see how they fare on Sunday. Also, a curious Memorial Day message from John McCain and a glimpse at Hillary Clinton’s early life in elementary school.

Daily Digest: Digging Obama

2008-05-29T11:30:43-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

If they don’t come to you, go to them. A new site gives Barack Obama supporters the chance to submit suggestions for the campaign, and to vote, Digg-style, on the submissions. Think the campaign should make transparency a core issue? Change the font in its designs? Go to Oh Boy Obama, submit an idea, and get voting. It’s a great idea, and one likely borne out of necessity: the Obama campaign has been criticized for not reaching out enough to online activists, and this adds a missing feedback loop (though my.barackobama.com seems to be working pretty well). (via Ben Smith)
Also from Ben: a video of Young Hillary Clinton (the anal editor in me has to point out that her name is spelled wrong in the title cards). Produced by online video producers 60frames, it picks up on the Hillary-was-always-like-this theme first expressed in Slate’s classic parody of Election from earlier this year.
A user on the new conservative hub The Next Right, echoing the oft-repeated lament that the GOP is lagging behind the Dems online, asks her Republican readers who, exactly, they are. The responses show a diversity of backgrounds — professional thirtysomethings, independent libertarians, baby boomer vets, hyper-educated twentysomethings, etc. — that makes it clear that online conservatives, like any large community, belong to a positively large, and heterogeneous, tent.
Xeroxing the spirit of FreeRice, the online game that seeks to end global hunger via mouse clicks, the Click 4 Obama game coverts clicks into Obama ads. Answer correctly a trivia question like “How long have American forces been fighting in Iraq,” and you’ve donated some prime pro-Obama ad space. With a generous helping of simple trivia questions to keep you clicking, it’s pretty addictive.
Causes, the Facebook app that we’ve covered before, has announced they’ve raised $2.5 million for almost 20,000 non-profits in the last year and have registered 12 million users. Those are impressive stats for an application that, for now, lives solely on Facebook. But the future is uncertain: as Facebook reconfigures its application platform and other services like Google Friend Connect arise, we’re certain to see Causes and other similar companies change their game plan.

The Candidates on the Web

Coinciding with John McCain’s attack on Barack Obama for only visiting Iraq once in the last two years, the RNC is featuring a countdown clock on its homepage that displays the days since Obama visited Iraq (872). They’ve smartly converted it into a widget so you, too, can keep tabs on Obama’s Iraq visits.

In Case You Missed It…

John McCain’s often aimless email messages are something of a recurring theme here at techPresident, so much so that Michael Whitney is dubbing the topic “McCain Email Watch.” Today’s example: a fundraising message that offered a 3’x6’ personalized banner for the low price of $250.

Daily Digest: Qik! Follow that Congressman!

2008-05-28T12:22:32-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

We’ve heard stories of superdelegates using YouTube to poll their constituents, but fake superdelegates on YouTube? It was bound to happen. Ever on the tech/politics beat, Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland discovered that thousands of activists were taken in by Tom Ryan, a fictional superdelegate running for Mayor of Scranton (isn’t there a certain fictional office based in Scranton too?) who's featured in videos promoting a new online sitcom. "Ryan" asked viewers to tell him whether he should support Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, and the people obliged. It’s all part of a sinister plot to get folks to watch the sitcom, called The Party. Also, he may have fooled the voters, but he didn't fool the sharp folks at the Superdelegate Transparency Project.
The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas continues to cover the clickocracy with depth and insight. Following up on Hillary’s hammering over last week’s RFK comments, Vargas plainly writes that Clinton “has had a complicated relationship to the Internet and, in comparison to her chief rival, a consistently losing Web presence.” From the “Vote Different” video to the controversy over her sniper fire comments to last week’s comments, she can’t get a break online. While Obama seems made for the web — savvy about online organizing, breaking fundraising records — Clinton is always on the ropes.
While the questions haven't been exactly rolling into the RNC’s Can We Ask campaign against Barack Obama, one notable entry came from none other than conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who asks, “Where’s the beef?” (wow, original question!). He wants to know how Obama is different from other Democratic candidates. We’re not so sure Obama will be quick to respond…
Everyone’s getting in on the election action this year: The America Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) invited designers to submit nonpartisan GOTV posters for a design contest. The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges (hey, why not let the design community vote instead?), and winning posters will be distributed nationally. We particular like the submissions from MSLK, including this one which reminds us of Radio Raheem.

The Candidates on the Web

John McCain may not be using technology as well as some would like, but, as the Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz writes, he’s been catching up to Barack Obama in appealing to the tech sector and drafting tech policy. Schatz reports that Obama is well-received in Silicon Valley for his stances on issues like Net Neutrality and broadband access, and McCain is starting to push his free-market approach, like tax breaks to companies that offer broadband to underserved communities. For more on the candidates' policies, check out TechCrunch’s interviews with Obama and McCain from last year.
McCain economic adviser and RNC Victory ‘08 Chairman Carly Fiorina recently answered Wired readers’ questions about McCain’s policies, offering tidbits about McCain’s stance on climate change (it exists, and the government should invest in basic research and leave the R&D to companies via tax credits), discretionary spending (bad!), foreign policy (different from Bush), and employment (send workers back to school). Check out the full interview if you want more than my quick and dirty parentheticals (I hope you do).
Hillary Clinton’s camp says they’ve received thousands of entries from creative supporters for their t-shirt contest, and they’ve narrowed the choices down to five designs. What’s your fave? The pantsuit? The Warhol? Or maybe the simpler signature? Go to the site to cast your vote.
Much of the money Ron Paul raised for his campaign via record-breaking money bombs is going to his family members, reports the Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk. Some nuggets: “Paul’s granddaughter Valori Pyeatt helps organize fundraising receptions and has been paid $17,157. Another granddaughter, Laura Paul ($2,724), handles orders for Ron Paul merchandise. Grandson Matthew Pyeatt ($3,251) manages Paul’s MySpace profile. Daughter Peggy Paul ($2,224) helps with campaign logistics.” Overall, the campaign has spent nearly $170,000 paying family members. “His family is very important to him,” Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton told the LA Times. Benton, by the way, is engaged to Paul’s granddaughter.
The Qik revolution is underway! Congressman John Culberson, a Republican from Texas, is the first Congressperson to use the live video-streaming service. His first foray: Qikking the NASA Mars landing. He's also on Twitter.

Daily Digest: Is Slatecard the Republican ActBlue?

2008-05-27T12:03:08-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

The Next Right, the conservatives’ new online hope, has launched. The site — a project of former Fred Thompson staffer Jon Henke, strategist and former John McCain staffer Soren Dayton, and techPres’ Patrick Ruffini — reminds us a lot of OpenLeft, though it lacks a similarly unifying philosophy. It’s a bit more on the call-to-action side of things: “As a community-driven grassroots action website for the right, we’ll feature in-depth political analysis, on-the-ground reports, and strategic discussion and debate.” With these three at the helm, we know this will be quality, smart stuff.
Meanwhile, blogger William Beutler has crowned techPres contributor David All’s Slatecard the “Republican ActBlue.” He cites the burst of mainstream political coverage the operation has received, All’s promotion of the project, and the fact that candidates have actually used it to raise more than $300,000 as evidence that Slatecard has moved beyond similar efforts like RightRoots and Big Red Tent. We sense a grudging respect for All’s project from Beutler; he refers to All’s “self-promotion” and titles his post “Let’s Just Admit Slatecard is the Republican ActBlue.” Either way, it’s a great accomplishment for All. The Next Right and Slatecard are baby steps, for sure, but they’re new points of online light for the GOP.
Hillary Clinton had a very bad day last Friday, when her unfortunate comment about RFK’s assassination blazed its way across the web. Whether or not it was taken out of context, the comment provided a new narrative for a press corps hungry for something to chomp on. For MSM reactions and mea culpas, check out the timeline from the New York Time’s Katherine Seelye, who’s been traveling with the Clinton camp, and Politico co-founder John Harris’s piece blaming a “news media more concerned with being interesting and provocative than with being relevant or serious.” That news media, ahem, includes the Politico, whose editors “are relentlessly focused on audience traffic” but “unapologetic in our premium on high velocity,” writes Harris. But he does think the quote was ripped out of context. Too bad! That’s life in the new media fast lane!
Columnist Roger Cohen schooled New York Times readers about something geeks have known for a while: “More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead over Hillary Clinton.” Better put: “It’s the networks, stupid.”
You know those TouchTones jukeboxes that have sprung up in bars over the last few years? Apparently they conduct surveys, too, and according to a recent one Barack Obama is the candidate most jukebox users would like to have a beer with, reports MediaPost’s Gavin O’Malley. The TouchTone survey also teamed up with Rock the Vote to give participants the chance to register to vote; 10,000 did. Who knew Obama would lay claim to the jukebox vote?
A conservative blogger is continuing to hound Minnesota Senatorial candidate Al Franken, writes the New York Times’ Monica Davey. Michael B. Brodkorb, who writes the Minnesota Democrats Exposed blog and is a constant thorn in Franken’s side, revealed that Franken owed New York State $25,000 in workers compensation insurance (which he has since paid). This and other stories has been picked up by the traditional media, forcing Franken to respond. This story reminds us a lot of Jan Frel’s seminal piece for us on a stealth campaign by a bunch of rightwing bloggers in South Dakota on behalf of Jon Thune in his race against Tom Daschle. Brodkorb seems more aboveboard than those folks were about their political connections, however.

The Candidates on the Web

Last week TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington conducted a Twitter-assisted interview with Newt Gingrich, in which the former Speaker talked about his American Solutions organization, which just opened an office in Palo Alto. The group is working on constructing a new set of ideas for governance — a second Contract with America — and Gingrich told Arrington that “If you get to the point [that the second contract] is clear enough and powerful enough, and if that point there is a big enough demand whether it is in 2012 or 2016, I will get to the point where I would run.” That should shake things up.
When in Puerto Rico… clips of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dancing in Puerto Rico are making the rounds. After Hillary remarks on how good the local beer is, she closes her eyes and shimmies for a couple of seconds. It makes us feel uncomfortable. Similarly, as Barack Obama walks through the streets, he mimics an off-camera dancer with some improvised moves that don’t seem to belong to any particular style. Slightly less embarrassing. Neither, however, compares to this slice of weirdness of John McCain. We’ve officially reached the dog days of the campaign.

In Case You Missed It…

Micah Sifry discovers a photo that is crying out for a good caption. Any suggestions? (It’s from Joe Trippi’s annual Memorial Day clambake.)

Bob Barr livestreamed his appearance at the Libertarian convention, and while there were few exciting moments to show, it’s pretty cool that his campaign is into this stuff.

We’ve all seen microsites used in politics, from ImpeachGonzales.org last year to the recently launched CanWeAsk.com, writes Luigi Montanez. But how about sites that are literally just one word? A few years ago the site Is Lost a Repeat? launched. Now, we have Is Barack Obama Muslim?, aimed at knocking down the rumors spread via email chain letters.

Nancy Scola reports that a new article in Yale’s Journal of Law & Technology offers up a somewhat counterintuitive new online plan for the next presidential administration to make government more useful, more accountable, and more transparent — in short, give up.

Daily Digest: Who Stole David Brooks?

2008-05-23T12:20:12-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

Alert: someone has kidnapped New York Times columnist David Brooks and replaced him with a a 25-year geek who refers to things like Twitter, Kottke.org, and Vampire Weekend in his columns, and who now writes phrases like “Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes.” At least it’s entertaining. Maybe the captors will release Brooks after Memorial Day, when he can resume describing the decline of the Republican Party and predicting Barack Obama’s success.
With more and more talk of a Barack Obama-Jim Webb ticket, the voter-generated content makers were bound to start producing. Colin Delany discovered one such project —ObamaWebb08.com. The choice is obviously up to Obama, but he and Webb do look pretty good together…
The Congressional Quarterly VP Madness contest — in which readers voted for who should be John McCain’s running mate — is over, and the winner is somewhat unexpected: Mike Huckabee! But why give up a budding career as a TV pundit, Huck? It definitely pays better!
People often complain that conservative and liberal sites like Townhall or DailyKos are political echo chambers, but a new study from Compete suggests that Huffington Post readers tend to me a pretty diverse group. In February 2008, 34% of visitors also read liberal blogs like Kos and Crooks and Liars, and 27% actually read conservative sites like Townhall and RedState.com. Maybe it’s the Hollwyood gossip that’s pulling them in. Townhall, we’ve discovered your new business strategy.
A new site dedicated to online video journalism has just launched, and so far it looks pretty promising. American News Project is funded by the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy. The site is reaching out to its readers for story ideas, funding, and even talent. Keep an eye on it.
Another cool new project comes from NPR, which has teamed up with the Center for Investigative Reporting to produce the Secret Money Project. NPR is asking listeners to help track down and identify this year’s crop of 527s that, we can be sure, will soon take the airwaves and the tubes by storm. It’s a welcome invitation, and we hope the public takes them up on it.
Social network aggregation site (say that 10 times fast) and potential heir to the Twitter throne FriendFeed just launched a new feature called Rooms, which lets users create public or private spaces to share info and create discussions about various topics. One of the first rooms set up was Obamamania — a place to post links and chat about Obama. The FriendFeed converts will be all over this, but will it gain popularity among the Twittering classes? (via Download Squad)

The Candidates on the Web

The GOP is definitely ramping up their use of YouTube. Case in point: the Republican National Convention has announced a new video contest. Voters are encouraged to submit video profiles of “someone in your neighborhood who goes above and beyond the call of duty to serve what Senator McCain calls ‘a cause greater than their own self-interest.’” The public can then vote for their favorites, and the winner will get a free trip to the convention. A very cool idea. Your move, DNC.
If you’re checking gas prices using GasBuddy.com or GasPriceWatch.com, you may be surprised to see ads run by the DSCC linking Republican leader Mitch McConnell to the oil and gas industry.

In Case You Missed It…

It’s one thing to read about an event in the newspaper; it’s another thing to watch the event in its unexpurgated form as raw, unedited video, writes Micah Sifry. Such is the case with Barack Obama’s appearance yesterday at a Boca Raton synagogue, , where he was making a direct appeal to Florida’s important bloc of Jewish voters to set aside some of their concerns or fears about his candidacy.

Just in time for the Memorial Day holiday, we bring you eight political videos that are guaranteed to stick to your consciousness like ketchup on a burger. You can never escape the tubes!

Obama won big in this month’s North Carolina primary and his online ad strategy in April may have played a role in driving his supporters to the polls, reports Kate Kaye. As the primaries chug along, Senator Barack Obama has steamrolled past fellow Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton and likely Republican nominee John McCain in the Web ad department.

Daily Digest: Lobbyist Lollypops, Blogger Blow-Ups

2008-05-22T12:08:28-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

Tired of hearing about the lobbyists working for the John McCain campaign? So are the folks at Campaign Money Watch, so much so that they’ve recorded a song asking McCain to fire all of the lobbyists working for his campaign. You can listen to the tune and sign a petition urging “John McCain to fire staff or fundraisers whose lobbying for brutal dictators, unsavory foreign interests, or other repressive regimes offend American values” at the Fire the Lobbyists! site. Meanwhile, some lobbyists — who stood by McCain has his campaign bottomed out last summer — are wondering if this is McCain’s way of saying “thanks.” (Campaign Money Watch is the 527 arm of Public Campaign Action Fund. Full disclosure: From 1997-2005, techPresident’s Micah Sifry was a senior analyst with a sister organization, Public Campaign.)
The DNCC state blog credentialing mess is continuing to kick up dust. We’ve twice written about protests of DNCC’s selection of state blogs to be represented at the Democratic convention. Pam Spaulding, one of the cooler heads among netroots bloggers, broke down the issues at stake, focusing on the DNCC’s failure to include more minority bloggers. Racial tensions — even among members of the “AfroSpear” — are rising, and Pam’s doing a great job of adding clarity to the situation.
The Next Right, the right’s answer to MyDD and OpenLeft, helmed by conservative strategists Soren Dayton, Jon Henke, and Patrick Ruffini, will be launching next Tuesday, May 27th. Keep your eye on it - this just might become the smartest conservative right-roots operation online.
The robo-call haters at StopPoliticalCalls.org have created a wonderful library of robo-calls from the candidates. If you aren’t “lucky” enough to have been called by a robo-citizen, now’s your chance to see what the fuss is all about.
Why are we pushing a Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “dream ticket” when we can get John McCain in there to form the ultimate nightmare ticket?
This is probably the funnest, most meaningless thing I’ve seen in months.
And this is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever posted, though 50,000 people on YouTube have watched it. If TV is a vast wasteland, then YouTube is a… wait, have you seen this? (Thx, Andrew Golis)
The folks behind One Web Day are celebrating Internet Week NY next month with a forum on Online Political Participation at NYU Law School on June 4 at 6pm. The star-studded panel will feature techPresident’s Andrew Rasiej and Zephyr Teachout, NewAssignment.net’s Jay Rosen, and PdF’s Allison Fine. It’s gonna be fantastic — be there.

The Candidates on the Web

A couple of days ago Barack Obama characterized John McCain’s comment about him meeting with the leaders of “rogue nations” as “”me immediately having Raul Castro over for tea.” The RNC thought it a poignant image, and quickly put up a “Barack Obama/Raul Castro Tea Set” for sale on eBay. If you buy it, “You and your friends could imitate Obama and Castro, sitting down and having tea while discussing world affairs.” Sounds fun! The current bid is at $33; if this kind of thing sounds like… wait for it… your cup of tea, get bidding!
Using HubSpot’s analytic tools, the Bivings Report’s Todd Zeigler compared Barack Obama and John McCain’s SEO chops and came up with a few surprises. McCain’s site came out on top, with a “website grade” of 98.7 to Obama’s 95. Another interesting finding: “According to the tool the Obama website is written on an Advanced/Doctoral reading level while McCain’s is written on an Secondary/High School level.”
Yesterday we mentioned that John McCain’s site had shed its Darth Vader look for something a bit friendlier. Ethan Demme, writing at TechRepublican, performed a thorough inspection and found a bunch of new, shiny features, including new blog badges and Facebook icons. But the infamous McCainSpace still appears to be empty and inactive.
Another politician has pledged to publicly punch his clock. Anchorage Mayor and Alaskan Senatorial candidate Mark Begich has promised to “post his daily Senate office schedule on his website so every Alaskan knows he is working for Alaska families, not special interests,” according to his campaign. The pledge is an echo of the Sunlight Foundation’s Punch Clock Campaign, and Zephyr Teachout, the former National Director of Sunlight Foundation and a techPrez blogger, is mighty pleased. “I am thrilled that Begich—and I hope many others this campaign season—brings some faith to the collective intelligence, over time, of the people he hopes to represent,” she writes at the Nation. (TechPresident’s Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry are advisers to the Sunlight Foundation.)

In Case You Missed It…

The John McCain campaign has been pilloried time and time again when it comes to their email strategy. The emails are overly long, unclear, and designed as if they were a piece of direct mail. But, as a public service to all campaigns and organizations looking to execute solid online organzing, Luigi Montanez points out exactly what makes an email successful.

Nancy Scola was at the 18th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, being held at Yale this week, and writes about a session on “Presidential Technology Policy: Priorities for the Next Executive” that featured representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns. The Obama camp sent the co-director of MIT’s decentralized information group. The McCain camp sent the former chief patent lawyer for Time Warner. The two seemed almost hand-picked as embodiments of the two very different ways a President Obama and a President McCain would handle tech policy.

Technical Housekeeping

2008-05-21T20:56:34-04:00

If you've had any problems accessing techPresident.com or Personal Democracy Forum today, our apologies: our servers were hit with a series of technical problems that briefly brought our sites down and are continuing to make them act a bit funky. Bear with us; things should be back to normal by the end of the day.

Daily Digest: We'll Do It Live!

2008-05-21T12:45:55-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

We thought we’d been covering the political technology space pretty well over the last year or so, but a new top-secret project somehow alluded us. Convinced that the conservatives’ deficit in online efficacy simply comes from lacking the right tools, The Trustees of the Republican Leadership Trust (yes, that’s the real name) are working on a secret weapon: the Republican All in One™ Political Suite.™ Beware Democrats! Look out progressives! The TRLT is convinced that their new tool will be the “GOP’s answer to MoveOn.org, Act Blue and multiple commercial vendors who provide political technology.” Without giving any details at all about what their Political Suite will look like, the TRLT is asking for pledges of $10 or $25 a month to help take over the world.
Technorati’s Jen McLean writes that “Nowhere have we seen a bigger impact of blogging and social media on the American political landscape than on the 2008 presidential election,” and she points to — of course! — techPresident’s Technorati charts two illustrate her point. As we’ve been seeing, Barack Obama has the most attention in the blogosphere, and John McCain has yet to spark up the ‘sphere in the same way. Maybe bloggers will get excited about McCain has we move into the general… but that’s a big maybe. (Technorati Chairman David Sifry is the younger brother of techPrez’ Micah Sifry.)
“Everything moves so fast in the world of online politics… that introspection is often lacking,” writes the Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas. So true. Vargas takes a closer look at President Bush’s online-only interview with the Politico. While Bush did answer some questions from citizens, Vargas councils us that “interactivity doesn’t necessarily lead” to transparency and accountability, and thus George Bush’s no-more-golf-after-Iraq claim isn’t exactly true. However, writes Vargas, the two young superdelegates who asked YouTube viewers who to endorse were using interactivity toward better ends. It’s a great point, and Vargas continues to be one of our foremost chroniclers of the “clickocracy.”
The DNC’s state blogger credentialing process is on the verge of becoming a fiasco. Marc Ambinder discovered a letter from 21 credentialed state bloggers who are protesting the exclusion of their progressive colleagues from the convention. They allege that some bloggers were chosen for their party loyalty, and not for their progressive bona fides. “The Democratic Party endangers its own long-term viability when it makes fealty a criterion for inclusion,” they write. Matt Stoller calls the credentialing of Cathleen Carrigan, an employee of Michigan Governer Jennifer Granholm “simply absurd… Granholm can get her employees credentials, she doesn’t need to take them from independent progressive activists.” We think it’s about time for some damage control from Howard Dean.
Second Life collides with ye olde meatspace: when disrupting an event in Second Life, griefers’ (as SL attackers are known) prefer the classic flying penis trick. Activists watching a speech by former chess master and current Russian politican Garry Kasparov took a cue from virtual life and launched a real flying penis as Kasparov spoke. It stayed in the air for about fives seconds before an enterprising politico smacked it out of the air, like a Russian Dikembe Mutombo.
Crack-for-geeks site Lifehacker doesn’t delve in politics, but a recent post announcing Google Earth’s new Google News layer uses a cool screenshot of news of Barack Obama’s huge rally in Portland layered onto Google Earth. Clearly, the possibilities are endless, but does anyone actually use Google Earth once they’ve downloaded it?
Check out this new twist on Yes We Can, from tunester Andy Fraser. It’s very, very smooth, kind of like Michael McDonald meets Barry White. One bit of advice, though, Andy: stream the song from your site, don’t make us download it. I guarantee you’ll get more listens, and thus more smoothness for all.

The Candidates on the Web

None more black! Todd Zeigler at the Bivings Report picked up on a design change for John McCain’s homepage, and it’s definitely for the better. The McCain camp revised with their initial Darth Vader look about a year ago, but the result was still a confusing clutter. The new refresh, which does away with the typical GOP web template and installs big readable fonts, is much needed. But Zeigler doesn’t “think slapping a new coat of paint on their existing strategy” — of basically ignoring the conversational web — is going to help.
Too little, very late: As it patiently trots toward the sunset, the Hillary Clinton campaign is stepping up its blogger outreach and use of Twitter, reports the New York Times’ Katherine Seelye. Perhaps taking a cue from the McCain camp, Clinton held her first blogger conference call last week (Obama has yet to do so), and has been firing off tweets to Twitter followers more frequently. The online conversation she wanted to have with America never really surfaced; we think she’d be in a better spot now if it had.
When it comes to governmental use of the web, the Brits are continuing to lap the U.S. The newest example is Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s new initiative, “Ask the PM,” in which the British public can ask him questions via YouTube, and he’ll respond on a regular basis. Seems simple, doesn’t it? In the U.S., we’ll have to first get around those archaic rules barring Congress from even using YouTube. Then we can talk about those conversations.

In Case You Missed It…

We’ll do it live! Check out the video of us editing of this very Daily Digest on Qik.com! (Warning: many bad jokes ahead.)

John McCain’s online team needs to find someone who knows what they’re doing with the campaign’s email list, writes Michael Whitney. Campaign manager Rick Davis sent an email to supporters this afternoon titled “Reckless” - clocking in at 597 words - without including a single link until the 580th word.

Michael Tate offers a quick assessment of Senator McCain’s “Behind the Scenes” videos on YouTube.

As an effective deployment of a modern media strategy, David All shares a recent example engineered by, among others, the Washington State Republican Party putting the hammer to Barack Obama after what All calls a major gaffe while campaigning in Oregon.

We’re still hard at work finalizing the program for this year’s fifth annual Personal Democracy Forum, which is taking place June 23-24 at Rose Hall in New York City, and we’re pleased to be able to share these updates with you on speakers and panels. Don’t wait til the last minute to register, by the way—the early bird rate is going to expire after May 31 and prices are going up. Save $100 by registering now.

Daily Digest: The Blogs Move Past Clinton

2008-05-20T12:03:19-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

While we’ve all been speculating about John McCain and Barack Obama’s VP candidates, it looks like the they’ve been keeping their own notes. Obama’s short list was leaked to humor site 23/6’s Lee Camp, and there are some surprises to be had. Number one on the list: Gary Coleman. Wait a minute, is this for real…? (Thx Ben Smith)
Picking up on our brief review of the DNC’s McCainPedia, Web 2.0 skeptic Craig Stoltz writes that the un-wiki site “exploits public familiarity with a hip new communication form (in this case, wikis, which are used for group content creation and editing) and then aggressively misapplies it.” Others agreed. “This perpetuates that silo approach to communication, and Web 2.0 is about enabling the voice of the people and their opinions,” Central Desktop CEO Isaac Garcia told Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland (the Obama campaign uses Central Desktop to coordinate field volunteers). However, no one has questioned the efficacy of the site from an oppo point-of-view. Indeed, it will make it easy for Democrats to find all of their oppo in place. Just don’t try contributing anything.
Videoblogger James Kotecki — who ascended from his dorm room to the swanky offices of the Politico earlier this year — teamed up with fellow vlogger David McMillan to ask a fairly taboo question: “Is Barack Obama Too Black?” What follows is some sober analysis of the ways Obama has been constructed as a black candidate by his own campaign, the Clinton campaign, and the media. It’s smart, but we miss the candidates-on-a-stick.
Brave News Films’ new anti-McCain video continues to be one of the most popular videos on YouTube, having racked up more than 770,000 views since it was launched two days ago, and it’s the number one viral video on Viral Video Chart. Impressive.
Bad news for Hillary Clinton: for the first time, she's fallen behind John McCain in blog mentions on Technorati. This confirms that, even though McCain hasn't been doing much with social media, the blogging public is moving on to an Obama vs. McCain general election.

The Candidates on the Web

Meanwhile, John McCain’s own TV ads/YouTube videos have been getting a fair amount of attention, though nothing near those that are attacking him (according to our TubeMogul charts, the number of daily views hasn't changed much in the last month). The new “2013” ad has been viewed almost 74,000 times. Its message — in 2013, things are gonna be a lot better thanks to a McCain presidency — could be seen as a tad bizarre, but its positive message is mighty appealing to those sick of attack-dog politics. But don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of that too.

In Case You Missed It…

Micah Sifry asks if Barack Obama and John McCain are actually using the social media tracking tool FriendFeed to follow tech gurus and tech-politics bloggers. The answer is no; the culprit was hiding in the techPresident shadows all along!

Daily Digest: McCainPedia Launches, But Is It Really A Wiki?

2008-05-19T12:27:42-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

Women’s blog network BlogHer has been keeping tabs on the presidential campaign all year long, and this week they scored a coup: a sit-down interview with Barack Obama (BlogHer has also extended invitations to Hillary Clinton and John McCain). Obama spent more than ten minutes talking to BlogHer’s Erin Kotecki Vest (who authored a letter to Hillary Clinton back in February asking her to step down) about Iraq, education, climate change, and more. Enough with the issues, though. Did I spy a two-day-old-mustache on Obama’s upper lip?
Of all of the anti-Obama smears emails going around, perhaps the most bizarre is one blaming Obama for the electoral problems in Kenya. The New Republic’s Douglas Wolk performs a literary deconstruction of the email, ultimately calling it “an amusing and cleverly constructed work of sci-fi,” though with its resorts to plain racism and bigotry, we’re not sure we’d call the email “clever” or “amusing.”
Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films is hitting John McCain yet again with a new video showing a series of alleged exaggerations from McCain as he’s questioned by media figures. It makes a strong argument by only sticking to McCain’s words and those of the TV anchors he’s talking to. The public seems to agree; the video has been viewed more than 415,000 times since it was posted one day ago, making it one of the most popular videos on YouTube.
Last week we reported that the DNCC had chosen its “State Blogger Corps” for the Democratic National Convention. Now some are taking issue with the lack of minority representation in that list. Francis L. Holland writes that he’s “concerned that virtually all of the state blogs selected by the Democratic National Committee to cover Denver are white.” But Pam Spaulding, while sympathetic to Holland’s claim, points out that “many of the state blogs [selected by the DNC] are community blogs. It’s hard to tell, unless people self-identify, who is a minority.” Given the lack of color-identification in many community blogs, the question of representation was probably bound to come up.
In addition to questions of minority representation, progressives in a few states are upset about which blogs were chosen for credentials. Matt Stoller writes at OpenLeft that bloggers in Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, and Michigan are protesting the choice of blogs with fewer progressive bona fides. Did Howard Dean not remember how outspoken and cantankerous political bloggers can be?
But is he good for the Jews? Last week, as Israel celebrated its 60th anniversary, American Jews continued to debate whether Barack was to be trusted as a friend of Israel. Reacting to one man’s “Jews Against Obama” t-shirt, a pro-Obama site called “Jews for Jews Against ‘Jews for Obama’” is producing anti-“Jews Against Obama” t-shirts. Got that?
The Democratic veepstakes are getting hot, and according to our Technorati charts, most of the online chatter in the last few days shows a jump for Joe Biden and Jim Webb.

The Candidates on the Web

The latest in the DNC’s roll-out of anti-John McCain oppo is McCainPedia. But while it applies the look and feel of Wikipedia to a database of anti-McCain arguments, it isn’t actually a wiki. “Unlike some wikis, McCainpedia is read-only and can’t be edited by the public,” write the authors. Um, ok. This wiki can be edited by its users, who are the DNC’s research operation, but not by the public. So they’re definitely stretching in calling it a wiki. But using the wiki platform is a smart way for the DNC’s oppo team to iterate its research on McCain without having to keep building new sites. If lots of people start linking to it, it will help them win the Google juice wars on a whole range of searches, like “McCain Iraq” or “McCain ethics.” Meanwhile, some Republicans are quick to attack. “This is nothing more than an oppo research dump, dressed up with a cool, tech-friendly sounding name,” a Republican tech strategist told techPresident.
In an effort to call attention to the 33 Senate races coming up in November, the DSCC has launched a new video initiative called The Road to Victory. It’s a video series led by ex-John Edwards staffer Amy Rubin in which she’ll be getting behind the scenes of the Democratic Senate races. See this video for highlights. While it should attract attention to these important yet overshadowed races, it could use less of the it’s-really-really-hip “rock” music soundtrack.

In Case You Missed It…

At the exact instant Colin Delany opened an email from him, Jim Webb came on the radio, leaving only one obvious question: is a two-fer good enough for “BINGO” in the veepstakes stature game?

WhatDoTheyKnow: FOI 2.0

2008-05-16T19:44:02-04:00

The folks at UK-based mySociety are developing a new site called WhatDoTheyKnow that simplifies to process of making freedom-of-information requests and uses RSS to make it impossibly easy to keep track of pet issues.
The site -- which is still very much in development -- looks simple, but there's a sophisticated engine running beneath the surface. UK citizens can search for the public authority they're interested in addressing, and then send off a request for information (under the UK's Freedom of Information Act, the government has to respond).
The fun part comes with the RSS (I challenge you to find a geekier sentence than that). When you search for "cars" in the search box at the top of the page it returns eight results for FOI requests that mention "cars."

At the bottom of that page is a link to an RSS fee; subscribe to it, and every time someone makes an FOI request mentioning "cars" you'll be notified.

This opens up all kinds of possibilities for term-tracking. Given that the site is still in development we anticipate more good stuff like this. How we wish mySociety could produce similar projects on this side of the Atlantic...

Daily Digest: Non-Conservatives Board the McCain Train

2008-05-16T12:17:12-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

Barack Obama’s message to wealthy Democratic funders is being heard loud and clear. As a result, Progressive Media USA, a new 527 led by David Brock, has essentially shuttered its doors. OpenLeft’s Matt Stoller, ever on the Obama-power beat, is ambivalent about the news. “Basically, [Progressive Media USA] was a very netroots friendly organization doing a lot of very positive anti-McCain work, and was also a potentially important allay [sic] of a new Democratic administration… At the same time, Progressive Media USA was also a soft-money organization dependent not upon small donations from the rank and file of the progressive movement, but instead upon humungous donations from a few dozen extremely wealthy donors,” he writes. The issue exemplifies the struggle between the billionaires and bloggers to make over the Democratic party, as described by Matt Bai in his book The Argument. As Stoller argues, there’s plenty of reason to think the grassroots will remain strong, while groups dependent on soft-money donors may continue to wither.
While an eMarketer study estimates that 80% of online Americans will watch online videos this year, a small percentage of them will watch political videos, according to eMarketer. A total of 12% of those online watched a campaign ad in December 2007, the study says, and 20% of them were ages 18-29. It’s true that older voters are yet to turn to the web in large numbers to watch campaign ads and videos, but as the Obama campaign has found out, the web is a terrific place to combat television’s sound-bite culture. Take a look at our YouTube charts to see what we mean.
Warning: serious lewdness ahead. Reacting to Rep. Mark Kirk’s decrying of “toilet sex” in Second Life (the video of Kirk’s complaint is down), Majorly snarky liberal blogger patriotboy, a.k.a Jesus’ General, a.k.a Gen. JC Christian, composed a satirical letter to Kirk in which he describes finding the Larry Craig Center in Second Life, which he calls “a monument to toilet sex.” Ugh. Given patriotboy’s earlier Second Life exploits, in which he built an anti-Rudy Giuliani center, we’re guessing he did more than discover the site. He posted G-rated pictures if you’re interested.

The Candidates on the Web

As Patrick Ruffini pointed out earlier today, John McCain’s approach to the web is mystifying. On one hand, he does more outreach to bloggers than any other candidate, but on the other he just doesn’t seem to get how to actually use those damn tubes. Case in point: he is now inviting non-conservative bloggers to join his conference calls. “The plan is to take the work we’ve already built on with conservative bloggers and to open up a dialogue with non-conservative bloggers and even nonpolitical bloggers,” McCain staffer Patrick Hynes told the Washington Times’ Stephan Dinan. One non-conservative on the call was Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent, who immediately reported that McCain “launched what may be his most direct attack yet on Barack Obama’s national security credentials.”
Despite the inevitable hits, McCain’s efforts to reach beyond the conservative base may be working. His new focus on climate change — including a pair of websites launched this week — appears to have been swaying Democratic voters.

In Case You Missed It…

It’s Friday, and time to settle in and for some early morning tubin’. In our favorite videos of the week, we’re surprised by the winner of MoveOn’s Obama ad contest; Ralph Nader antagonizes Google; Hillary strikes a softer tone, and Hillary impressions continue to get big laughs.

Micah Sifry is still at the Berkman at 10 conference, and Steve Garfield is busy livestreaming it on Qik. Check out Steve's archive of sessions, including one led by Micah and the Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller on transparency and government.

Good online strategy is simple, writes Patrick Ruffini: reflect the very best of your candidate offline. John McCain offline is transparent, accessible, and willing to answer any question. John McCain online is stilted and awkwardly asking me for money. There’s a fundamental disconnect.

Ari Melber is liveblogging from the Berkman at 10 conference, which he calls the most important Internet gathering in the country.

Daily Digest: Edwards Jumps on the Barackwagon

2008-05-15T12:07:36-04:00

Edwards Endorses Obama

The wait is over: John Edwards is endorsing Barack Obama. We first found out early yesterday evening, but the info didn't come from the boob tube, or from CNN.com, or from a little poli-birdy in our ears. Well, was a kind of bird; it was Twitter that did the trick. John Dickerson -- Slate reporter and journo-twitterer extraordinaire -- tweeted the news yesterday at around 5pm. In the world of breaking news, Twitter reigns supreme.
Missing from the stage last night: Elizabeth Edwards. Ben Smith saw the writing on the wall, as it were.
Just after Edwards gave his endorsement speech an email from his campaign arrived in by inbox. I naturally assumed it had something to do with Barack Obama. Wrong! Titled, "Help me in North Carolina," it was an ask for donations to his College for Everyone program. At first it seemed like an incongruous piece of messaging, but it's possible that open rates, and thus donations, were sky high. Maybe it was a smarter move than we first thought.
Check out that jump for Edwards on our Technorati charts. Folks are quickly speculating as to what role Edwards might play in the Obama campaign and an Obama administration. Word on the street, however, is that there's a greater chance of Bill Clinton inviting Obama to a boys' night out in Chappaqua than Edwards claiming the VP spot.
Meanwhile, Edwards' homepage is stuck on January 30, 2008.

In Other News

That Obama smear video that Eyeblast.tv claims has been viewed more than one million times (see our contention of that claim here), and that manages to reproduce almost every untruth that's been spun about the candidate, was produced by former wedding videographer and Christian TV producer Jason "Molotov" Mitchell. Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland has the goods, reviewing Mitchell's history of provocative videomaking. He may be good at making noise, but it doesn't look like Mitchell is so good at, or much interested in, the truthiness side of things.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean has announced the state blogs selected to be part of the "State Blogger Corps" at this year's Democratic National Convention. A full list is here, and even a passing glance makes it clear that Democratic and progressive blogging is alive and well across the country. Will we see a similar effort from the RNC?
In a new Atlantic issue virtually devoted to Barack Obama, Marc Ambinder goes down the well-treaded path of documenting the various ways new media technologies have changed our politics, from Andrew Jackson and newspapers to FDR and radio to JFK and television to Obama and the internet. If Obama wins the presidency, "it will be in no small part because he has understood the medium more fully than his opponents do," Ambinder writes . He details the ways that Obama not only gets social networking and online video, but his intuitive understanding of how the web promotes participatory democracy. But the web can be "unruly and fickle," and it could either make Obama a powerful president, or forestall his agenda.
Another way that Obama gets technology: he has an iPhone!

In Case You Missed It…

Micah Sifry is at Harvard today and tomorrow attending the Berkman Center's 10th anniversary. If you want to peek in on the proceedings, there are lots of ways to join in: You can watch Steve Garfield's live video streams on Qik.com, you can log into the IRC back-channel at irc.freenode.net/berkman, and there's a lot of blogging, twittering and flickring happening, all grouped around the tag "Berkmanat10."

Daily Digest: Obama Steers Clear of 527s

2008-05-14T11:51:31-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

Ronulans across the country are facing a quandary. Should they vote for John McCain this November or stay true to his Paulness by writing him in? Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland wanted to find out what happened to “this rolling fireball of energy and enthusiasm” that the Paulites brought to the table, and polled them about their November plans. More than 2,000 Ronstars have taken her poll thus far, and a whopping 47% say they’ll be writing in Ron Paul. Only 7% will vote for John McCain, and 6% are sitting the thing out completely. Most surprisingly, 24% say they will vote for Barack Obama. Although, like Paul, Obama opposed the war in Iraq, he also espouses many of the big-government policies that sent folks running to Paul in the first place. Contradictions: the breakfast of champions.
Taking a cue from the Surrender Hillary site, Colorado progressive site ProgressNowAction is encouraging readers to post their own clever captions to a bunch of Photoshopped anti-McCain images. It’s almost as fun as Mitt Romney’s old robo-call tool.
We’ve linked to Rosemary Watson’s Hillary Clinton impressions — which she features on her ThatHillaryShow YouTube channel — before, but this is hands-down the best Hillary impression we’ve ever seen. SNL, here’s your Amy Poehler replacement.
Despite the fact that the Obama campaign is hiring in-house online adspeople, analysts are still projecting that most campaign ad funds will be spent offline. In her new white paper, Politics ‘08 Online: Push Meets Pull (price: $695!), Lisa E. Phillips predicts that “Over the course of the year, less than 2% of political ad budgets will be spent online.” Meawhile, 50% to 80% will be spent on something called “television,” which is apparently some sort of glass box featured in nursing homes and Pep Boys franchises across the country.
Spelers unight! Having taken a look at Google Adwords search trends, Spot-on’s Scott Olin Schmidt made a surprising discovery:

In Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, more than two-thousand people per day misspelled Hillary Clinton’s name; In Indiana and North Carolina, one out of six searches for Hillary Clinton have just one “L” in her first name. Another five percent are looking for Hillary Rodman Clinton, who apparently served eight years First Lady of the NBA Bad Boys Club.

And even if you spelled Hillary’s name right, Google doesn’t tell you much. Schmidt sees the future in contextual advertising, which, he says, both Obama and Clinton are owning at the moment.

The Candidates on the Web

The Politico’s Ben Smith reports that the Obama campaign is “steering the candidate’s wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups,” i.e., 527s that could help frame the message for the Democrats in the general election, and toward the campaign itself. There’s been lots of speculation on campaign’s intentions. The move may be directed at certain media-centric 527s like David Brock’s Media Matters and John Podesta’s Center for American Progress that could be perceived as too close to Hillary Clinton. It’s unlikely that the Obama campaign wants to cut off all third-party funders, and is trying to control its message as tightly as possible. Last week Matt Stoller enumerated the ways Obama has built a parallel Democratic infrastructure; whatever the motives, this looks like one more step in that direction.
We recently got an alert from the Frank Lautenberg Senate campaign announcing the creation of an “Action Center” on their website, but were disappointed to see that it’s the same web 1.0 approach: tell-a-friend, sign-a-petition, make-a-donation (while we collect your email addresses). You’d think that in the wake of Obama’s impressive online organizing that more state-level campaigns would be looking at emulating his approach with my.barackobama.com.
Earlier this week Ralph Nader showed up at the Google offices to talk about his presidential campaign. About 5 minutes in, he says the Internet has been a "disappointment," and then, "don't get me going on the Internet." He goes on to say that "it hasn't shown much by way of mobilizing, except on Internet issues..." Keep watching; it gets worse. We're perplexed as to why Nader bothered to go to Google, as he seems to have no idea what it is or represents.
This just in: TechCrunch is reporting that Al Gore's CurrentTV tried to buy Digg in 2006, offering at least $100 million for it. Too bad he never got the chance to day, "I invented crowd-sourced URL bookmarking."

In Case You Missed It…

Based on a few recent experiences regarding the YouTube community, and specifically how the tool could help increase citizen participation in our upcoming general election debates, David All seeks to encourage the Commission on Presidential Debates — the Old Guards if you will — to truly embrace the Internet in at least one of its three scheduled debates.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain continue to hit up supporters for cash via e-mail, but Obama for America is going one step further, reports Kate Kaye. The Senator’s campaign is asking diehards via e-mail to trek to Oregon and knock on doors. The grassroots-minded campaign also used e-mail to push for residents of Obama’s home state of Illinois to get out Tuesday’s Indiana vote, in-person.

Micah Sifry offers a peek at the emerging program for this year’s fifth annual Personal Democracy Forum, which is coming up this June 23-24 in New York City. We’re pretty excited about the line-up that’s taking shape (and the fact that this is the first year we’re expanding to two days). Plus we think that this year’s event is going to be a seminal moment in defining the Internet’s impact in opening up not only politics, but also governance (i.e., all the important stuff that happens after the election is over).

Daily Digest: Drafting a Digital New Deal

2008-05-13T12:43:06-04:00

The Web on the Candidates

More evidence that Facebook is biased? HuffPo blogger Will Bower, in a post titled “Glitch-Plagued Clinton Facebook Group Cries Foul; Obama Page Glitch Free” (that title is so funky, I had to post it), quotes a letter from the administrator of the Facebook group Hillary Clinton for President - One Million Strong to a Facebook administrator. Apparently a “glitch” has left the group “unable to add moderators, to ban members, or remove bans on members.” Does the fact that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes works on Barack Obama’s web team have anything to do with this? We're sure it has nothing to do with anything...
FDR 2.0? In a long and thoughtful post at Afro-Netizen, Helene De Michiel, national co-director of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), writes that “Our next president can help reconstruct America’s fragmented and relatively weak public communications infrastructure by using the most effective tool our youth wield - the power and depth of their digital fluency,” so she calls for a Digital New Deal. De Michiel details a “large-scale public sector agenda” that, she argues, will reinvigorate the economy, provide jobs, and stoke civic activism. The public sector aspect is sure to make conservatives squirm, but all online activists will find something to like in her techno-positivism.
Another fantastic site from the Sunlight Foundation is letting the light in on the personal worth of elected representatives. Fortune 535 lets people see what Members of Congress are actually worth and how much they’ve gained since they came to Congress. Even more fun are the graphs showing the average net worth of a lawmaker versus the average American family. Hint: it isn’t even close. (techPres’ Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are advisers to the Sunlight Foundation).
We still haven’t forgiven humor site 23/6 for fooling us with that whole McCain Girls fiasco, but they are producing a pretty funny series of Schoolhouse Rocks cartoons called “White House Rocks.” The first features a new group of superheroes called in to save the electoral day… funny. But we’re still suspicious, 23/6.
Next week Mediabistro, the media-focused jobs and community site, is holding a two-day summit called the Mediabistro Circus that will discuss “the digital platforms and trends that are changing media.” The carnival will include a talk by New York Times digital news editor Jim Roberts about how digital media has changed coverage of the presidential campaigns. Other speakers include Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson, writer Steven Johnson, Robert Scoble, Six Apart’s Anil Dash, and Blip.tv co-founder Dina Kaplan. Not to be missed.
Personal Democracy Forum 2008 is only six weeks away! Stay tuned for a big announcement, and be sure to register.

The Candidates on the Web

The RNC and John McCain have launched two websites focused on (gasp!) global warming and the environment. The RNC’s site, Environmental Pledge, is a simple form asking people to make pledges — start a carpool, use mass transit, keep your car tuned up, use a compact fluorescent bulb — to help the environment (there’s no mention of “climate change” or “global warming” anywhere, just the liberal use of the color green) with John McCain’s heading looming from above. The second site, which features a McCain URL, is much more involved, and establishes McCain’s market-based cap-and-trade “Plan on Global Climate Change” with a nifty Flash presentation, details about McCain’s plan, and a link to that GOP pledge. The site is one of the first GOP sites to heavily emphasize protecting the environment and to use phrases like “global climate change.” It will interesting to gauge the bases’ response.
He’s just like us; he posts on craigslist! According to an ad in Chicago craigslist, the Obama campaign is “looking for internet experts who strongly support Barack Obama for President.” It looks like the campaign is planning on handling web advertising in-house, a rare move that, according to one online advertising exec, “is curious and contradicts the norm in political campaigning.” The reasoning behind the move? “It’s possible that Obama’s current agency simply doesn’t have enough online advertising resources — or that the campaign is trying to save money by bringing everything under one roof,” says our source.
Gov Gab, the government site that bills itself as “Your U.S. Government Blog,” is taking a cue from the TSA blog and opening up for reader input. “Give us your ideas of how you’d like us to use this blog to provide you with information, services or a place to express your opinions,” writes Joanne (no last name given). “We’re ready to experiment.” Cool! If you get a chance, go ahead and leave a comment.
He really is a rock star candidate. Barack Obama’s campaign is starting to put Barack’s “greatest hits” up as subscribable podcasts on iTunes. What next, a duet between Barack and Bono?

In Case You Missed It…

To get a better sense of what tools political professionals are using, both for advocacy and to help elect candidates, Colin Delany implores us to take the 2008 E-Voter Institute Survey of Political and Advocacy Communications Leaders today.