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2008: Daily Digest 1-30-07

BY Matt Ortega | Tuesday, January 30 2007

The Web on the Candidates

  • The second web video attacking Senator John McCain (R-AZ) hit the ‘internet tubes’ on Monday as documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald challenged McCain’s self-described “straight talk” from the war in Iraq to the religious right for a new blog, The Real McCain.
  • Michael Finnegan covered the ad for the Los Angeles Times and how online video is a threat to ’08 hopefuls as “gaffes” made in front of a few people can rapidly grow by the thousands in just hours.
  • Meanwhile, in the Washington Times, Christina Bellantoni cited the pros of web-based video that allows for pre-recorded and carefully crafted messages that, as Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) noted, is a cost-effective media tool. Web designer Matthew Barton warned that candidates have to “play by the YouTube rules” to attract more than just political junkies.
  • Internet strategists for presidential campaigns on both sides stress that an online presence is a must for ’08 candidates but Senator Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) web coordinator, Peter Daou, warned in Aoife McCarthy’s piece in The Politico, “Innovation is not an end in itself. It is a way to enhance communication.”
  • Laurin Manning (South Carolina ’08) stumbled upon a redirect from a misspelled variation of “Rudy Giuliani” to former Senator John Edwards’ (D-NC) campaign site. Several hours later, the redirect changed to former Governor Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) official site.
  • Republicans continue to fall behind Democrats in mobilizing the online armies for the 2008 presidential election, Matt Browner Hamlin (The Right’s Field) found. GOP online activists, however, are not waiting and are feverishly trying to emulate their Democratic counterparts without any immediate success.
  • Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (DailyKos) questioned an article in the Wall Street Journal that said Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was winning “netroots primaries” when there is little evidence to that effect, citing fellow netroots stalwart Matt Stoller and a recent DailyKos poll conducted in mid-January.

The Candidates on the Web

  • Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK) formed his presidential exploratory committee on Monday and launched the campaign website but continued the GOP trend against web-based video and failing to embrace the social networks.
  • This weekend’s National Day of Energy Action is the spotlighted video from former Senator John Edwards (D-NC).
  • Video from the January staff meeting of former Governor Tom Vilsack (D-IA) appears to be a thinly-veiled stump speech.
  • Ron Paul Watch: Congressman Ron Paul’s (R-TX) campaign website is still lame but did make one minor change: the maximum donation amounts were increased in accordance with election law. (Outdated screenshot available here.) At least we know the site was not abandoned.
  • James Gilmore (R-VA) officially formed a presidential exploratory committee several weeks ago yet remained homeless on the internet.

News Briefs

RSS Feed thursday >

House Republicans Get a Jump on the Budget

Via Politico's Mike Allen, the House Republicans are out with a video — this one attributed to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — getting the drop on President Barack Obama's next federal budget, expected Monday. GO

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

GO

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