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?

Barack Obama | Brave New Films | DNC | John McCain
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