The Web on the Candidates

• Barack Obama’s speech on Jeremiah Wright, race, and the future of America (just a typical speech, right?) has won accolades from the liberal blogosphere and… not so much among conversatives. Some snippets:

• While Salon’s Glenn Greenwald praised Obama’s “faith in the average American voter,” he also found this to be one of the greatest weaknesses of the campaign. Fiery as ever, Greenwald suspects that

  Even Americans who authentically believe that they want a ‘new, better politics’ may be swayed by the same old Drudgian sewerage because it is powerful and ubiquitous.

  The New Republic’s Michael Crowley has a similar take: He fears that America hasn’t come as far as Obama hopes, and that “the answer to that question that will determine the fate of Barack Obama.” Obama evangelist Andrew Sullivan, in his typically hyperbolic manner, writes that

  Bill Clinton once said that everything bad in America can be rectified by what is good in America. He was right - and Obama takes that to a new level. And does it with the deepest darkest wound in this country’s history. I love this country. I don’t remember loving it or hoping more from it than today.

  Um, ok, thanks for that.

  Pop + Politics called it “a stunner of a speech on the history of race relations in the United States.” Our own Liza Sabater called the speech “flawless,” though judging from the giant image of Obama at the top of her site, she might be a tad biased.

• Conservative responses centered on what many writers and pundits saw as Obama’s continuing unwillingness to distance himself from Wright. New Gingrich told Fox’s Neil Cavuto that Obama’s speech was “intellectually, fundamentally dishonest” for failing to adequately deal with his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. HotAir’s Allahpundit calls it a “‘historic,’ ass-saving speech” (tell us what you really think!) and “absentee,” writing on RedState, wrote that “What’s amazing is the willingness of the Barackolytes to swallow his outrageously obvious dishonesty.” And while Kathleen Parker, writing at Townhall.com, admits that the speech “was eloquent, inspiring and will be read in schools for generations,” that
  

  between the lines of change and reconciliation were a discomfiting hint of buried fury, a sense of racial righteousness and a tacit approval attached to his expressed disapproval of Wright’s now-famous raves that will leave many Americans wondering: Is he with us? Or is he against us?

• Check out the roundup of blogosphere reactions from the New York Times’ Ariel Alexovich for more; he has some espcially good bits from African American blogs.

• And what about those other speeches, the ones from Jeremiah Wright himself? Videos of them on YouTube have opened up “a conversation so kaleidoscopic only the vastness of the Internet has room for it,” writes the Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas. A bunch of video responses to Wright and mashups of the original speeches have popped up in recent days. Some of them are heartfult; some attack Wright’s anger with more anger. But all of them prove that, in David Weinberger’s words, “because many are watching each other’s videos and responding to each other, [YouTube is] also a place that provides a way to re-contextualize what’s been taken out of context. It’s a place to have a dialogue.” Take that, naysayers of the YouTube Republic!

• Essential media critic and founder of NewAssignment.net Jay Rosen skewers CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and his cohort at the “Best Political Team in Television,” otherwise known as CNN, for their coverage of the Obama speech. In his analysis, Blitzer quickly reduced the speech to a “a “pre-emptive strike” against opponents’ attacks. But Rosen, having viewed a speech that moved him and many others, laments that the POV of newsrooms like Blitzer’s is that “everything is a move in the game of getting elected, and it’s our job in political television to explain to you, the slightly clueless viewer at home, what the special tactics in this case are, then to estimate whether they will work.” Yes, but no one can hold a pen and point to graphs like Wolf can.

• Now for something completely different: YouTube brings us this classic from Schoolhouse Rock, on how a bill becomes law. Is it me, or does “Bill” look awfully forlorn as he waits to become “Law”?

The Candidates on the Web

• The video of Obama’s 37-minute-long speech has been watched nearly a million times in less than twenty-four hours. Add the ability to get the YouTube generation to watch a 30+ minute political speech on their computer -- YouTube only counts full viewings as a "view" -- to the list of Obama’s accomplishments.

In Case You Missed It…

Last week, the McCain campaign announced a break from the BC’04 command-and-control model in the political department. There will be no political director, and instead authority will be devolved to the states and regions. Patrick Ruffini rightly wonders what this means for technology and the McCain campaign.

Pennsylvania Voter Services just fixed a serious security breach in their online voter registration process, reports Alan Rosenblatt. As recently as yesterday afternoon, anyone downloading a blank voter registration card was provided a URL that included an ID number at the end which could be edited to access thousands of filled out voter registration cards. Democracy at work!

In February, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama battled for Texas voters in millions of get out the vote ads leading up to the Lone Star primary and caucuses, writes Kate Kaye. Meanwhile, John McCain took advantage of his lone Republican candidate status with a “Get Hillary” Web ad campaign.

Barack Obama | CNN | Jay Rosen | Wolf Blitzer
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