I had the pleasure of sitting down with Joe Trippi a week ago, as we both were in DC for the launch of Larry Lessig's new Change-Congress project. (Joe is working with Larry on CC, and the Sunlight Foundation, which I consult for, was co-sponsoring Larry's speech). If you watch closely, you can see Larry in the background of the first video, in fact. In general, the lack of production values suggests I should stick to my day job, I know. But we covered a lot of interesting ground, as you'll see...

I'm at the National Press Club for the launch of Stanford Prof. Larry Lessig's new project, Change-Congress.org. He's here as part of Sunshine Week, and his speech is co-sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation (which I consult for) as well as the Omidyar Network. As you may know, last year, Lessig decided to shift his focus from the fight for free culture to the fight for a clean government. Here are my notes on his talk, paraphrasing as best as I can...

Trippi warns about Obama's blue-collar support; Jerome Armstrong mocks Chris Bowers; will the "emerging church" go for Obama?; Lessig aims to Change-Congress; Blogger flophouses in DC make the front page; inside Obama's Texas field operation; Ron Paul says he's still running; and we add the VP field to our charts.

It's the big day! We'll be liveblogging here at techPres starting at around 7:30; "if web traffic equalled votes.." If only!; Barack Obama is officially the hockey-stick candidate; MTV's Street Team '08 fans out across the country; a majority of Facebook users tell pollsters that Hillary Clinton would be a bad choice for president; Tim Wu on Net neutrality and Obama; two polls from LinkedIn and MySpace give show a preference for Obama; Noam Scheiber interviews Joe Trippi; Obama is encouraging supporters to email and call their friends, even if they're too busy watching the "Yes We Can" video; a look at the candidates use of technology in the final push before Super Tuesday; and why Fred Thompson's blog was good, even if his campaign, er, wasn't.

Joe Trippi is one of the few political consultants who speaks frankly, even to the detriment of his clients, and loves democracy even more than he loves politics. I caught up with him for an hour-long conversation about his work for the John Edwards campaign, why Hillary Clinton might be the Howard Dean of 2008, and how the Iowa caucus is like the Internet.

The Politico launches a young voter-themed sub-site; Debate Porridge calls the campaigns on a Saturday and finds that most of them aren't working; interesting numbers about the effectiveness of campaigns' web effectiveness from the Politico's Ryan Grim and Compete.com; a puff piece about Joe Trippi tracks his rise to de facto campaign manager of the Edwards campaign; and Stephen Colbert passes Bill Richardson in a poll and more than 500,000 are members of a pro-Colbert Facebook group.

The Web on the Candidates

John Edwards advisor Joe Trippi is in the U.K., telling British politicians that "Internet activism is spelling the end for the age of spin." In an interview with the Guardian, Trippi talked about the always-on nature of online campaigning. "Before TV, what mattered was how your voice sounded. Then with TV it matters what your candidate looks like ... We are now moving to a medium where authenticity is king, from what things look like to what's real ... You have to be 'on' 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Trippi said. He describes the new world of politics in the "peer-to-peer social network world," in which the opinion of peers is worth more than a top-down campaign message. While no candidates in the U.S. - including Edwards -- are completely running this kind of campaign, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party in the U.K., continues his engaged web presence with multiple videos a week and an active community blog.

The FEC has produced a very cool map showing most campaign contributions to presidential candidates (PAC money and contributions under $200 aren't represented). A bunch of bubbles are overlaid over a map of the U.S., and when you click on the name of a candidate (listed to the left) you'll see the areas that have donated to them; click on the bubbles and you'll get a close-up view of that region; click on them again and you'll see a list of individual donors and the amount they contributed. (hat tip: Hotline)

The Web on the Candidates

Kate Phillips at the Caucus picks up on a "flooding the zone" meme that's made it's way from Chuck DeFeo to Joe Trippi to TechPresident contributor David All. Writes All, "the idea behind 'flooding the zone' is to virtually take organic search on YouTube out of the picture as effectively as possible. It’s practically a last-resort tactic which will hopefully never be needed. If the decision is made by your campaign that a YouTube video, like 'Macaca' is crippling the campaign, pull the trigger and 'flood the zone.'" Phillips points out that the previous day she posted about Trippi's reference to flooding the zone at the Business Development Institute's conference on "The Future of Political Communications" (and I heard him use the same phrase at the Politics Online conference earlier this year). Not everyone agrees with the the theory, however. Justin Hamilton, a staffer for Rep. George Miller, criticizes the approach in the comments below Phillips' post: "1) If it’s viral, it’s being passed peer to peer primarily. So the smaller number of people who take the time to find something by organic search on youtube won’t have an impact. 2) By going so far out of your way to keep people from seeing something, you’ve created a taboo effect that will both: make people want to see it more; and give the story a second day because the coverage will turn to the 'desperate cover up attempt' that might make more of an issue than the issue itself."