Ambitious politicians don't need to be urged to run for higher office. But "draft" websites, which the netroots used to put mavericks like Wesley Clark and Jim Webb on the map, are becoming a standard political exercise. And that's probably a bad thing for Internet politics.

This past Monday a bunch of RootsCamp alumni, led by Ruby Sinreich, Rik Riel, and avatars named errcheck Hicks and Effulgent Brown, organized an anti-war protest on Virtual Capitol Hill in Second Life. Sinreich (nom de avatar: Ruby Glitter) expected about 80 avatars to show up -- 40 more than Second Life usually recommends, due to massive slowdown issues -- but in the end 126 residents showed up to dance, wave signs, yell slogans, and show their support. It was, Sinreich says, a smashing success.

The progressive blogosphere has been waiting with baited breath for news about the fate of John Edwards' bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen after they were criticized for writing anti-Catholic slurs before working for Edwards. Salon reported that they were fired yesterday, but TAPPED and others have heard otherwise. And Glenn Greenwald has been building an unbelievably long list of links to other blogs covering this.

The MSM has been covering the story with mixed value; for example Time Magazine does a decent job of putting it into larger context, but oddly claims that the story has an antecedent in "Democrat" John Thune's hiring of bloggers in his run against Senator Tom Daschle in "2005." Hello, rewrite? (Read our seminal story on the Thune bloggers episode here.

The Web on the Candidates

"If the liberal blogs want to understand why so few people outside their narrow echo chamber take them seriously, and what it will take to gain the broader credibility they crave, they should look no further than their handling of the recent flap over John Edwards’ foul-mouthed blogger hires," says Dan Gerstein in the Politico.

Patrick Ruffini calls John Edwards' site a "mess," in part because, as Todd Ziegler notes, there are icons for and links to 24 social news/social networking sites. "I get it. The Edwards campaign is really into the whole Web 2.0 thing. Message delivered. I understand the power of these networks. I do. But 24 accounts? This just strikes me as sort of ridiculous," Ziegler says. Ruffini says there's also too much text on the home page: "A homepage should be made for scanning, so a big graphic with your message of the day, with icons and 5-6 word descriptions of your key features is what works best."

[We're going to post text or excerpts from the proceedings of PdF2007 here as fast as we can get them. (And we're also working to get footage from the mainhall sessions up online too, but that will take til tomorrow.) MyDD blogger Matt Stoller gave a great talk explaining the rise of the netroots, which he abridged slightly because time was tight; we're thrilled to publish the full text below. The editors.]

A few years ago, I had what's called a 'crazy uncle' theory of internet politics. I noticed that the figures who did well online all seemed like a crazy uncle saying things that are true but extremely uncomfortable, that power and authority was built on silly illusions. You know, it's like when you're a kid at Thanksgiving and your uncle starts telling you about how much pot your parents smoked, which you had never really known about. It's uncomfortable but kind of awesome.

The Web on the Candidates

OpenSecrets.org has just released first-quarter expenditure numbers for all of the candidates, and while it would take weeks to analyze the amount of data they've released, Chris Bowers has a good analysis going. Barack Obama spent more than the others in almost all of the categories, and he far and away spent the most on "Internet Media" -- $299,000 -- which, as Bowers notes, is five times more than the rest of the field combined.

Joe Klein is frustrated that smart political blogging "is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere," and he points to the "spitballs" aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for their positions on the Iraq war as evidence. "Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded," he writes, explaining that only voted against the recent Iraq resolution because they were bullied by anti-war bloggers (the Netroots?). This, Klein says, its dangerous because Democratic candidates are becoming beholden to the base in the same way that the GOP embraced conservative radio in the '90s. (via Election Geek)

Caroline Giuliani likes Barack Obama; Fred Thompson goes 2.0; Huffington Post exposes the money chase; vote-trading gets legalized; bloggers debate diversity issues; Mitt Romney defends his religion on YouTube; and Elizabeth Edwards explains that "We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman."

The open-sourcing of debate planning; the debate on the online Right; the demographics of the online Left; the ongoing decline of newspapers; another exploitative video; and whose website is winning the most attention...

Fallout from Elizabeth Edwards' quote; Rocketboom on how Denver '08 will be open access; cracks in the liberal-left; bundling for the unbundled; Ellen Goodman weighs in on net-gender; YouTube YouChoose has issues; ABC and NBC liberate pres-video; Republicans use the net for stealth attacks; and we win an award...

More news about the anti-Thompson site PhonyFred.org and its connection to the Romney campaign; the Huffington Post, Yahoo, and Slate team up to produce a "Mashup" presidential forum, though it might not allow for mashups after all; TechRepublican introduces a new policy series; Unity08 releases a study that suggests that Americans are fed up with the two-party system; Barack Obama is on LinkedIn; Fred Thompson needs to rename his FredCast section (any ideas?); and Hillary Clinton needs some widgets.