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The Daily Digest: 2/8/07

BY Joshua Levy | Thursday, February 8 2007

The Web on the Candidates

  • 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.
  • Meanwhile, Matt Stoller of MyDD writes about a precipitous drop in Edwards' netroots support, from 35 points in January to 26 points according to two DailyKos poll. According to Stoller, "this is probably due to the Iran flap, where he spoke belligerently to a group of a neoconservatives, walking back his rhetoric a few days later."
  • The blogosphere is buzzing about the undecided Rudy Giuliani's presidential prospects. Captain's Quarters has fun with the latest Quinnipiac poll showing Giuliani coming out on top in Florida; he's more popular than Hillary Clinton.
  • Although most GOP candidates have a miniscule presence online, Mitt Romney has been garnering some honest online grassroots support. A Technorati user named parachutegirl gives a rundown of his appeal to conservative voters and links to a bunch of pro-Romney sites and blogs.

The Candidates on the Web

  • Rudy, we know you're "undecided," but can't you build out your exploratory site a bit more? Right now it's little more than a glorified email address harvester, complete with a giant red CONTRIBUTE command button front and center.
  • It was five, then it was three... the home page of Joe Biden's web site now features six images of his face! Not a good way to convince the American public that this election is about them...
  • Meanwhile, Tom Vilsack's site gives supporters a chance to respond to Vilsack's winter DNC meeting speech on the front page (just one image of Vilsack!).

Hillary's blog countdown

  • Seventeen days since Hillary Clinton said "I'm in" but still no campaign blog...

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

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

friday >

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

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