Last night's debate is roundly criticized on liberal blogs; a new site asks Obama supporters to add their testimonials; a London Mayoral candidate will hold a live chat with voters; a nostalgic look at voter-generated video from Eyeblast.tv; James Kotecki gets serious; Obama is Apple, Hillary is Microsoft. Really?; Allison fine, co-editor of our Rebooting America project, will be interviewed live and online next week; and Hillary is following exactly ZERO people on Twitter.

The MySpace Primary launches, underwhelms; James Kotecki asks why Ron Paul's supporters are overwhelmingly male; a new bumper crop of bloggers rises in Iowa; a new pro-Huckabee group attacks Mitt Romney; the God-o-Meter charts the Godliest candidates; who are new video jabs from Huckabee and Romney aimed at?; and Huckabee pulls a mysterious (and expensive) ad campaign at the last minute.

Getting ready for tonight's CNN/YouTube debate; it's good to see all of the Republicans participating, and the introduction of user-submitted videos is a welcome change, but we're still wishing it involved the public in the question selection process; debate executive producer David Borhman continues to be skeptical of allowing the pubic to choose the questions; UStream is becoming a significant player in online political video; James Kotecki takes a bath, guest curates YouTube's front page; the DNC announces a new video library of Republican campaign appearances; John Edwards launches a new anti-lobbyist project; and Hillary and Barack both teach their supporters how to caucus.

Slate writers on the glories of Google Suggest; James Kotecki officially joins the Politico; are DailyKos' traffic numbers artificially inflated by Sitemeter?; the lack of social conservatives online; techPresident is profiled by the Washington Post; Leon Wolf leaves the Brownback campaign; Marc Ambinder thinks Chris Dodd's web team is the most innovative out there; Barack Obama and the 21st-century fireside chat; a report from Elizabeth Edwards' meetup with mommy bloggers; and Obama's blog outreach guy leaves the campaign.

More Wikipedia un-controversies are uncovered, thanks to WikiScanner; Wired talks to David All about his Modern Media Strategies workshop; James Kotecki realizes that the candidates have been BREAKING THE LAW; Cracked produces a parody of the CNN/YouTube debate; Todd Zeigler on the most-viewed YouTube videos from the Dems; and more Facebook and MySpace friends could mean more votes.

The Web on the Candidates

A commenter on Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine says that "there's a big elephant in the room on viral video for politics," which is that as more political advertising (and eyeballs) end up on YouTube, local broadcast stations will lose their most cherished sources of funding, similar to the way Craigslist has challenged newspapers' classified ads model.  The dominant advertising mode is still TV, Jarvis writes, but it won't be that way forever: "All political advertising won’t migrate online yet because the audience on broadcast is bigger and campaigns are inherently conservative. But there will be a point of no return."   

James Kotecki's new video takes a look at the most popular videos on YouTube that feature politicians doing or saying something stupid.  He isn't sure that, in the end, these assorted "macaca" moments will ultimately affect the race, since the more we record candidates' every move, the more likely they'll get caught making gaffes, and we'll become used to the idea that candidates make mistakes.  Kotecki ends with a sorta-funny montage of his own "gaffes."

The Web on the Candidates

The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the presidential candidates' use of video, and the reviewers that pick it apart. Specifically, he interviews Jeff Jarvis, James Kotecki, and techPresident's own Micah Sifry about what the candidates still have to learn about online video. Online viewers want something different than they're getting from the candidates; while one of Hillary Clinton's recent Hillcasts had about 15,000 visitors, a popular video of YouTube featuring Clinton singing an out-of-tune national anthem has been viewed over 1.1 million times. A lot of viewers are looking for that human touch: "Look at how the candidates are talking in their videos. With a few exceptions, they're mostly looking sideways, not talking directly to the camera. The important thing about this medium is it's very human and intimate. A voter comes across and clicks on you. You should talk to that voter and look at him in the eye," says Jarvis. Micah agrees. "There's something fundamentally different about video online. Viewers are looking for that rare, unscripted, revealing moment, to get a little sense of who these candidates really are."