The Web on the Candidates

• One blogger covering the race for the Greensboro, NC News-Record will stop at nothing to cover the candidates, even if it means sneaking into closed-press events. Mark Blinker has a pretty convincing argument about why it’s ok for him to cover a closed Hillary Clinton event in Graham, NC. “I have resisted, until now, pointing out the fact that there were 700 people in that venue, 95 percent of who were toting cell phones with cameras and recorders, a bunch with personal cameras and all, I would think, with decent enough memories to relate the event to friends and neighbors. So since everyone invited to the event was potentially a reporter, that ‘closed press’ thing seemed pretty laughable.” After Bittergate and the release of Hillary’s comments about MoveOn to a “closed” audience, it’s time for the candidates to understand that the era of “closed” events may be coming to a, ahem, close. Meanwhile, Hillary did participate in a live-streamed meeting with the Indianapolis Star.

• MoveOn has announced the 15 finalists in its Obama in 30 Seconds contest. There have already been about 5.5 million votes on the videos so far, so even if these ads don’t replay on the TV they’ve made their mark. Do check them out — regardless of your leanings, you’ll probably agree that the technical level is quite high (well, for amateurs).

• What with Jeremiah Wright's double-whammy and Barack Obama's speech in which he officially rejected and denounced Wright, Obama is dominating online conversation. According to Technorati, a week ago Hillary was the hot topic with more than 4,500 blog mentions on April 24. After the PA primary, chatter went down for both candidates but it has picked up big time for Obama, who had 5,256 blog mentions yesterday. An unscientific survey of the blogo-scape shows that reactions are mixed to whether or not he finally, ultimately put Wright behind him, and we suspect most bloggers are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

• Project Breakout is a running a Political Pundit competition that will send two citizen pundits/vloggers each to the Democratic and Republican national conventions. One contestant, progressive videoblogger Joe Felice, has been covering the election all year, and he aptly describes his submission as a “frenetic assault of content.” We agree, and we think frenetic is a good thing. Check out the site to view the rest of the entries.

• Wonkette links to what it claims is possibly the funniest DailyKos post ever. The post — which is indeed pretty funny — includes this classic passage: “…There were two stars that were highlighted by the comet’s passage, Mirfak, and Algol. Mirfak is the elbow of Perseus’s sword hand. Algol, Medussa’a eye, has long been seen as one of the most malifec and evil stars in the heavens… Obama was born with his sun in Leo, and his story exemplifies the quest of the Solar Hero.” I was disappointed that Sauron didn’t make an appearance.

• Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions is renewing its call for Lincoln-Douglas-style debates in the general election, and by way of quoting the Clinton campaign, calling for such a debate between Barack and Hillary. We’re not sure the primary campaign needs any more debates, but we could definite benefit from ideas like this in the general. Maybe we could include the internet in there too, to actually involve the public in a real way.

• Yesterday newly-annointed PdF Senior Editor Allison Fine was interviewed by another new addition to the PdF family, Senior Editor Dave Witzel, about our Rebooting America book project. Allison talks about the ideas behind the anthology project, the folks already involved, and the some of the fantastic topics being explored. While we’ve invited thinkers at the cutting edge of the tech/politics world, we’re also inviting the public to submit essays and vote on their favorites; go to the Rebooting site for more.

• Allison also just published a new, fascinating paper called Social Citizens on young activists and social entrepreneurs. If you ask us, it’s set to become a seminal work describing this new set of social activists. Read it.

The Candidates on the Web

• OpenLeft’s Matt Stoller doesn’t mince words when it comes to, well, anything. In a post with the innocuous-sounding title “A Suggestion for the Obama Campaign,” Stoller refers to two recent criticisms of Obama’s appearance on Fox News and laments that lack of netroots participation in the campaign’s decision-making process. “There is basically no blogger communications going on as far as I can tell,” he writes, pointing at that Hillary Clinton and John McCain both have better blogger outreach strategies. “That is most likely because their new media director, Joe Rospars, is a remarkably skilled logistics operator with limited bandwidth for communications.” But what do you really think, Matt? We’re not sure this sweeping accusation is entirely accurate, and are looking into it.

In Case You Missed It…

The line between mediated and unmediated communication is blurring, writes Michael Tate, and a device like Chumby accelerates the blur.

Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Jeremiah Wright
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