It's probably not every day that Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and Kentucky's uber-conservative Senator Jim Bunning get nearly the same emails for standing up against the same bill. But emails are pouring into every corner of Capitol Hill objecting to the Bush Administration's $700 billion no-oversight bailout measure; A quick peek at InTrade's Electoral Vote Predictor might be a fun way to take the temperature of the betting class, but FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver reports that the market seems funny of late; "Joe Biden's gaffes have become so excessive that we've now dedicated an entire site," says the Republican National Committee, which had previously been keeping track of the Dem VP candidates supposedly goofs with a simple clock; and much more.

Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee win the Iowa caucuses on a night of record turnouts, especially by youth voters; could Eventful demands be accurate predictors of primary results?; Elaine Young considers what effect social media may have had on last night's results; Ron Paul gets dissed, again, by the media; Chris Dodd and Joe Biden drop out, but Mike Gravel absolutely DID NOT; a new poll confirms that more Americans are getting their election news online; and what if the top GOP web consultants were trekkies?

The Giuliani Quote Generator Facebook app automates absurdist phrases; Off The Bus speaks truth to the polls, launches its new Polling Project; Ask Your Lawmaker Diggifies the public's questions to the candidates; is Karl Rove a better pundit than Markos Moulitsas?; A clip from the Joe Scarborough show is another example of journalists focusing on anything but the issues; VetVoice, a site devoted to veterans' issues in the campaign, launches with a number of candidate posts on the way; analyzing and voting on campaign logos; a new Obama video takes health care head-on; and TechCrunch interviews John Edwards.

Why do more men than women engage with political websites? Are they're avoiding doing the dishes?; A new site in support of Ron Paul gets into field organizing; Ann Romney has a new blog; and third-quarter fundraising numbers are starting to come in, and Ron Paul is the big surprise.

The Web on the Candidates

Rudy Giuliani isn't using the web smartly enough, and that's why he has the most to fear from it, writes Jeff Jarvis. Because he hasn't produce any videos of his own, Giuliani could be hurt by a new video from New York firefighters who have been sparring with Giuliani, blaming him for bad radios on 9/11 and their inability to fully recover other firefighters' remains, Jarvis says. "Even before this video, if you went to YouTube and searched for the latest videos on Giuliani you’d find no end of Ron Paul videos (because he’s everywhere) and then no end of videos from 9/11 conspiracy theorists and deniers and Giuliani haters. Fringe though they may be, these people own 'Giuliani' on YouTube. Giuliani doesn’t," Jarvis writes. To counteract this effect, Jarvis says Giuliani should "flood-the-zone" -- an idea first made popular by Joe Trippi -- to ensure that Giuliani's positive outnumber the negative. But first, he needs to stop being so afraid of the web. Jarvis reminds us that "this is the same candidate who still has a private MySpace page! He has no Facebook page. His web site doesn’t even have a blog."

Reacting to Joe Biden's recent comments about the blogosphere ("They don't own the Democratic Party. What are they talking about?"), Mike Lux, a co-founder of the new progressive site Open Left, drafted an open letter to him. "It pains me... to see your disdain and, I think, ignorance, about the millions of people who are active in politics through the internet: the members of groups like MoveOn.org, the writers and readers of blogs, the activists who get information and sign petitions and take digital cameras to political events and organize local events through the internet," Lux wrote. "When the folks in this movement speak of taking back our party, we should be clear: we do want to take it back from the inside-the-Beltway elite punditry, and give more ownership to grassroots activists who are the heart and soul of our party. What exactly is wrong with that?" In Biden's defense, he didn't really come out strongly against the blogosphere, but was referring to one blogger, and in the rest of the interview, he doesn't trash bloggers at all and even makes a reference to attending the YearlyKos conference.

The Web on the Candidates

Gaby Wood, in yesterday's Guardian, reviews the details of the "YouTube election" for British readers. Most of the examples -- the "1984" ad, Obama Girl, "I Feel Pretty," and so on -- are familiar to readers of this site, but Wood takes an interesting look at the idea of voter-created campaign ads. "The notion of a 'citizen ad' is an intriguing one, suggesting as it does both a citizen's arrest - the idea of doing something without pay for the public good - and Citizen Kane. You can, from the privacy (and affordability) of your own home, have an effect akin to that of a mogul," Wood writes. "Is YouTube the ultimate form of democracy, then, a means by which voters can have their say and politicians can really listen? Or is it something to be feared, a kind of anarchic 24-hour surveillance?" The answer to this question -- which continues to be asked about the web itself -- isn't as stark as Wood suggests.

An anti-Hillary Clinton Facebook group, "One Million AGAINST Hillary Clinton," now has more supporters than the successful group from which it derives its name, "One Million Strong for Barack." The anti-Clinton group claims an impressive 348,556 members, while the Obama group has a 309,674. When gauging a candidate's popularity on Facebook, how should we factor in this level of unpopularity? Do the negative numbers cancel out the positive numbers? And should we take the group's claim that "whether you are supporting Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, John Edwards or Barack Obama a single goal exists, to ensure that another Clinton is not put into the White House" at face value, or is this a partisan Republican group? (Thanks, Patrick.)

The Web on the Candidates

Jay Rosen and Arianna Huffington have released more details about their joint citizen journalism project that will offer an alternative to horse-race journalism by opening up the process of covering the 2008 race to voters across the country. They're calling it OffTheBus, it will launch some time in mid-July, and they've hired two veterans of online politics, Amanda Michel and Zack Exley, to lead the project. In the tradition of open sites like the DailyKos or TPMCafe, anyone will be able to contribute via their own blogs, and the strongest material will filter to the front page. It will also feature original blogging focused on all of the candidates and original investigative reporting. Check out Jay's post for more; this promises to be an exciting, and much needed, antidote to who's-leading-in-the-polls mainstream coverage of the candidates.

Due to the abnormally long campaign season, the campaigns are increasingly turning to online ad campaigns, writes Amy Schatz at the Wall Street Journal. While candidates will still spend the bulk of their advertising budgets on TV ads, they're using the same strategies online as with traditional media. "Campaigns are following the same pattern with online advertising as they have in the past using traditional media: Begin by targeting the most active members of the party's base and shift later to more general ads targeting the broader electorate," Schatz writes. John Edwards is spending the most on blog ads, surprisingly followed by Chris Dodd and, not so surprisingly, Hillary Clinton, and most of the candidates are using Google AdWords. "I've become a search evangelist," says Becki Donatelli, who's directing online fundraising for John McCain.

The Web on the Candidates

James Kotecki is calling Hillary Clinton to task for not having posted a new "Hillcast" video in over six weeks. When she first started to post videos, they were a bit stilted and tight, and her call to "let the conversation begin" was contradicted by the sense that we were being talked at, not talked with. As Kotecki notes, her videos were better and more relaxed over time, but then they just stopped. Why has she stopped, he wonders, and when can she "let the conversation continue"?

To gaffe or not to gaffe? Joe Biden is making waves again with his blunt talk, this time telling a supporter at a fish fry that he would shove the Iraq funding bill down Bush's throat. While the comments below Ben Smith's Politico post about it are critical of Biden and the remark, Biden's own team is proud of it, and is promoting it on Biden's YouTube channel.

The Web on the Candidates

Colin Delany at e.politics links to a post from the French blog Netpolitique responding to PoliticsOnline's assertion that Barack Obamacould be the JFK of the web. Instead, the French writer thinks that the U.S. is far behind the French: "Not to sound haughty, but French presidential candidates have been there and done that, and more, for over two years. They are now headed into the final stretch of a bruising political campaign which has ignited the French blogosphere for months now..." But Delany thinks his fellow Americans have been doing a comparable job: "American candidates have been using video-sharing and social networking applications extensively for months now, and if the French candidates are doing it more comprehensively, they’re also much closer to election day (as in, weeks instead of the nearly-a-year we’ll be waiting for the first primaries). Remember, the American candidates just unveiled their initial sites a few weeks ago. And, as [s]he acknowledges, online organizing isn’t winning elections yet — mainstream media still rule (as does local organizing, something that he doesn’t touch on at all)."

The New York Times has produced a great Flash feature that lays campaign contributions (unfortunately, only those over $200) over a map of the United States, divided by candidate. There are no real revelations here, but it's a great way to visualize how much money the candidates received, and where it came from.

The Web on the Candidates
MyDD's Jonathan Singer interviewed John Kerry on his book tour and Kerry unexpectedly mentioned that John McCain had approached him in 2004 about joining the ticket as Vice President.  While Kerry declined to discuss this more, when pushed by Singer to confirm the remark, he replied, "Absolutely correct."  Needless to say, Singer doesn't think the allegation bodes well for McCain.  "This story could hardly come at a worse time for McCain, whose campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is already noticeably foundering," he writes.

Michael McElroy at the Caucus wraps up the blogosphere's treatment of John McCain in light of his recent trip to Iraq, his disappointing fundraising numbers, and his alleged overture to John Kerry about being Vice President in 2004.  Kevin Drum said about McCain's trip to Iraq, "Note to conservatives... do you really think you can get away with pretending that the whole trip went smoothly and the press is merely being unfair in its reporting?" ( McCain has been criticized for painting a rosy picture of Iraq after his visit there).  Michelle Malkin, however, said that "while I'm no fan of his, what he has been saying the past week is the reality we saw when we were in Baghdad in January. It ain’t a stroll in the park. It’s a war zone, for heaven’s sake. But it ain’t all Armageddon either.”  More at the Caucus.