The Web on the Candidates

• Marc Ambinder reports that a “Clinton insider” — former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle’s executive assistant, Adam Parkhomenko — has produced a new website called Vote Both that’s calling for an unity ticket with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (no word on who comes first). It’s a nice idea. I’d also like to ride a flying pig across the Atlantic Ocean some day.

• If you’re tired of waiting around for those darn super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them support Clinton or Obama. It’s run by the unaffiliated State Democracy Foundation, though we can’t guarantee this will help any more than, say, Howard Dean on Meet the Press.

• Conservative bloggers are pitching would-be Republican savior Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as a possible VP choice for John McCain, writes the Washington Times’ Carrie Sheffield. In addition to calling him “the next Ronald Reagan” and pointing out the advantage of his age (he’s 36), there’s the inevitable Obama comparison. “These days, Bobby Jindal is working for change in a city that could eat the ethical foibles of Obama’s Chicago for breakfast, like so many shrimp upon a bed of grits,” Townhall’s Mary Katherine Ham writes.

• In a post at Virtual Vantage Points blog (produced by online consultants at APCO Worldwide), Craig Fuller shows off two tag clouds that show the most popular terms being used by U.S.-based liberal and conservative bloggers from April 7. For the liberals, the big terms are predictable: “Clinton,” “Obama,” “McCain,” “Campaign,” “Penn.” The conservative cloud is much more interesting. The big terms are “Clinton,” “Obama,” “Islamic,” “Right,” “Government,” “Iran,” and “Iraq.” Something’s missing, right? “McCain” is a teensy-weensy term, the same size as terms like “man,” “media,” and “money.”

• Like its American counterpart, big Chinese search engine Baidu sometimes plays around with its logo. The most recent experiment features none other than Barack Obama, with a donkey, fishing net, and computer mouse in tow:

  

• Andrew Leonard at Salon notes that if you click the logo you’re taken to a Chinese-language Obama bio, the headline of which apparently translates to “The black son/child Obama — anything is possible!” (Thx Colin)

• Those candidates are so cute, I wish I could just fold them up and put them in my pocket… And now I can! Fun site foldUScandidate offers fold-up designs so you can have your own paper Obama, Clinton, or McCain. There’s also a cool how-to video.

• Online video and community site Heavy.com (it looks like an online version of Spike TV, complete with ADD-infused “maleness”)) produced a parody of MTV’s “The Hills” called “Over the Hills” about — get it? — old people. For the next episode, they’ve tried to recruit the ultimate old guy, John McCain, though we’re not sure if the slightly offensive letter they sent McCain will convince him. On the plus side, he has said he's a fan of "The Hills."

The Candidates on the Web

• Traffic to all of the candidates’ sites was down last month, according to data from Compete. Barack Obama saw a 33% drop, while visits to Hillary Clinton’s site dropped by 28%. But perhaps the biggest surprise is the 58% drop in visits to Mike Gravel’s site. Hopefully his new psychedelic masterpiece with reverse the trend. We've noticed a similar drop in blog mentions of the candidates; maybe it's a combination of election fatigue and the long lull in primaries before PA.

In Case You Missed It…

As each primary has come and gone this year — Iowa, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday — YouTube has encouraged users to cover them using video. But politics editor Steve Grove, who heads up the YouChoose ‘08 section of the site, never thought we’d be going this late into the year. So now C-SPAN is teaming up with YouTube to give voters a place to show their primary-focused videos.

Baidu | Barack Obama | Bobby Jindal | Hillary Clinton | John McCain
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