The Letter Wars: MoveOn fights a letter from Clinton donors with their own letter; Political Machine is apparently some sort of game about politics. We're not sure; a conversation about Obama and the "digital presidency" is revived on Slashdot; and Mike Gravel is still in this thing, even if YouTube doesn't think so.

Making delegate calculus easier for March 4 and beyond; a city from John McCain is on sale for $1,000,000,000,000.95; Glassbooth builds a Facebook app you help you choose your candidate; a web art project works on the John McCain-as-Wilfrod Brimley trick; how a volunteer helped organize Texas for Obama; and Mike Gravel threatens to sue a pro-Clinton 527.

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 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.

OffTheBus launches a new wiki tracking presidential campaign staffers; looking at potential FEC violations in candidates' Second Life presences; listing the top-ten anti-Hillary sites, which are collectively raising a ton of cash to stop her; and Ron Paul reports a haul of $5 million this quarter, raising eyebrows and comparisons to Howard Dean.

The Web on the Candidates

A good back-and-forth about the successes, failures, merits, and results of the CNN/YouTube debate is taking place over at Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine. In a long, (maybe too) complicated discussion, Jarvis reiterates his disappointment in the debate, thinking that "TV got in the way" of the authenticity promised by YouTube's participation. He goes head-to-head with BBC'er Kevin Marsh, who called the debate a "terrific clash... between two media cultures; old-style 'big journalism' and new-style 'citizen media.'" Marsh then calls Jarvis an "uber-zealot" who wants to "bring video-sharing into the democratic process." Jarvis responds, the gloves come off, Marsh shows up in the comments, and another commenter brings things things back to earth.

A new site called Map the Candidates uses Google Maps and pulls in information from YouTube, online news sources, and candidate web sites to... map the candidates. You can view individuals candidates' paths across the country (well, across the early primary states) or look at all of the candidates' paths together, which can get cluttered pretty quickly. It's very similar to the Washington Post's Campaign Tracker, but could actually prove more useful. A good mashup.

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

Does the performance of a candidate's web page help determine their online effectiveness and the amount of online donations they bring in? Katherine Noyes at TechNewsWorld reports that 62% of respondents to a "nationwide survey" "said they'd abandon the online donation process after two unsuccessful attempts, and 67 percent said they would tell other people if the donation process didn't work well," and "of the 43 percent of survey respondents who had already visited or who planned to visit candidate Web sites, 58 percent said they believe there will be a correlation between the candidate with the best-performing Web site and the ultimate winner of the presidential race." However, these stats ignore the actual content of the web sites -- are candidates blogging, using video, or Twittering? Are they using social networking sites? While a site's poor performance can undeniably aggravate users and discourage them from donating, there also other online factors to consider when judging a candidates' online presence.

The Candidates on the Web

John Edwards has launched a new web site called Support the Troops. End the War, with an overlong url to boot, that is calling for Americans to... support the troops and end the war with a series of actions over Memorial Day weekend. The site begins, "As citizens, we honor and support our troops for their service and sacrifice. As Americans, we are blessed by that sacrifice and support, which keeps us safe and keeps us strong. As patriots, we call on our government to support our troops in the most important way it can - by ending this war and bringing them home," and provides 10 things you can do over Memorial Day weekend toward that end. Otherwise, the site is mostly a place to gather email addresses, though it also provides a way to search for Memorial Day activities near you. However, I live in one of the most populated spots in the country, and the nearest activity ("Donation") was over nine miles away, followed by an activity ("Call/email President Bush and your Congressional Representatives") almost 29 miles away.

The Web on the Candidates

More on the Ron Paul madness: although Paul barely registers in nationwide polls about the Republican presidential contenders, he actually won ABC's online poll following last week's Republican debate, garnering more than 9,400 of 11,000 votes as of mid-day Monday. ABC News, which apparently feels like it's been punk'd, chalks it up to "Paul supporters [who] have mastered the art of 'viral marketing,' using Internet savvy and blog postings to create at least the perception of momentum for his long-shot presidential bid." Meanwhile, Todd Zeigler has a more lengthy analysis of why Paul is so hot on Digg, noting that, in the absence of mainstream coverage, Paul's supporters are turning to Digg (Democrat Mike Gravel is also starting to get dugg), and Digg readers have been receptive. The result? A submission trying to get Paul on the Daily Show has attracted over 5,500 diggs.

DomeNation, the bi-partisan Internet TV project started by MyDD's Jerome Armstrong TechPresident's David All, posted its first interview yesterday, with Senator John Kerry. Kerry was open and friendly during the interview, in which, among other things, he discussed YouTube and the role of the Internet in politics. He talked about posting on Firedoglake and name-checked an impressive array of bloggers. "They're the new medium, the new ways of communicating with people... they've been a terrific truth and accountability squad," he said.

ZDNet tech blogger Donna Bogatin examines the online outreach of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and the results are mixed. She labeled his announcement speech "staid" and failing to make him stand out from other candidates declaring online. Questioning Biden's ability to connect to potential voters, Bogatin writes, "Perhaps Jill [Biden] should give Joe lessons in networking" after photos of the senator's wife receive more attention than the senator himself.

Jeremy Bronson, reporting for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, chronicled how candidates are combating the YouTube effect and trying to turn it around in their favor.