The Web on the Candidates

• There’s been a ton of chatter lately about whether online presidential campaigning can be turned into real votes. Much of the talk looks at the issue too starkly: do Facebook friends = votes? But an article for Wharton’s online business journal, Knowledge@Wharton (the articles are written collaboratively), gets deeper, looking at things through a business and marketing lens.

• The Nation’s Ari Melber, on the other hand, has a compelling story about how Barack Obama organizers are using Facebook, their own networking tools, and text messaging to target and organize young voters. It’s still hard to develop a causal relationship between online organizing and votes, but clearly Obama is doing something right.

• Young people aren’t just voting more, they’re getting their news in new ways. The Pew Research Center has released a study (pdf) showing that 42% of people aged 18-29 regularly learn about the presidential campaign on the internet, compared to just 20% in 2004, and 37% of Americans aged 18-24 get their campaign news from social networking sites. That Facebook/ABC partnership is beginning to make sense…

• In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, Jeff Jarvis noticed three media narratives about sexism, racism, and cynicism that are, as Jarvis sees it, proof of the media establishment’s bias against her. In his discussion of the cyncism narrative, Jarvis charts the progression of Barack Obama’s “change” meme. Once Obama started using the word in October, mentions of it in the blogosphere spiked, and the other Democratic candidates picked it up as well. Videos from the last three months show the increasing use of the word in signage and in speeches, culminating in an Obama crowd screaming “change” at a rally with Oprah. Now even Mitt Romney is a change candidate!

• Making the jump: About a month ago we linked to an anti-Mike Huckabee video featuring the mother of Carol Sue Shields, the woman who was murdered by a man who opponents say Huckabee helped release from prison. Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland reports that the creator of the ad has created a 527 and has raised enough money to push the ad from the web to the TV; it aired during last night’s Republican debate.

• In the bold tradition of cynical voting maneuvers in Michigan, Markos Moulitsas is urging DailyKos readers to vote for Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary. (The DNC temporarily stripped the state of its delegates for violating party rules and moving its primary up to Jan. 15, so there are, for now, no delegates for the Dems to win). Why Romney? Because he’s poised to drop out if he loses Michigan. But Kos wants him in: “The more Republican candidates we have fighting it out, trashing each other with negative ads and spending tons of money, the better it is for us,” he writes.

The Candidates on the Web

• Yesterday Barack Obama scored a big endorsement from John Kerry and one from Rep. George Miller, and there are more rumored endorsements coming. Another endorsement that didn’t generate so many headlines was from netroots favorite Ned Lamont, who beat Joe Lieberman in the Senate primary in Connecticut in 2006, only to lose to a newly-independent Lieberman in the general. Lamont posted a short video announcing the news, which may or may not be too cute for its own good.

• Matt Stoller is lukewarm about the Lamont endorsement, since he feels that both Obama and Hillary Clinton “betrayed” Lamont during his 2006 Senatorial campaign. “I hope Lamont is able to persuade Obama to actually stand for principle,” Stoller says, referring to Obama’s lack of support for some of Stoller’s key issues like the FISA amendment. “That would make his endorsement truly meaningful.”

In Case You Missed It…

It’s the return of our favorite political videos of the week! We look at a few clips from Iowa and New Hampshire that have become genuine cultural moment and that may have helped tip the polls, and a couple of voter-generated videos that fall flat.

Whither third parties and independents in 2008, asks Micah Sifry. Unity08 is fading, as expected. But Bloomberg may yet run, if the conditions are right. With the right message, he could even go all the way.

Barack Obama is the leading Democratic candidate with a clear mobile strategy, writes ClickZ’s Courtney Acuff.

Micah reports that MoveOn is rolling out some cool new tools for political organizing, starting with “VotePoke”—an innovative way to get people registered to vote—and ActivList, an event syndication feed.

Alan Rosenblatt responds to the suggestion that it was offline efforts, not online activity, that won the day in New Hampshire.

Barack Obama | Facebook | George Miller | Hillary Clinton | John Kerry | Mike Huckabee | Mitt Romney | Ned Lamont
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