Daily Digest: The Digg Olympics

The Web on the Candidates

• Anti-McCain Video Gets a Digg Gold Medal: Top video on Digg in the past 24 hours, "Republicans and military men on John McCain" is an anti-McCain voter-generated video that so far has just over 200,000 views. Getting a boost from Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall doesn't hurt either. The "spine chilling" video is set to that terrifying song from "Requiem for a Dream" but the power of the song pales in comparison to Scott Ritter’s warning on Iran. Note: the video contains graphic images. #

• Keeping Up With VP 2.0: The competition for Vice President is, unlike the presidential campaign, one of the most opaque and ill-understood phenomena in politics, and the public doesn't tend to get much involved until after the pick is announced. Proof of that--if you go on Facebook and search for groups with the word "VP" in them, they're mostly about student government elections. But we're keeping our eye on a new group just launched by Huffington Post’s Max Bernstein, called “100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh for VP.” The anti-Bayh drumbeat has been picked up by sites like The Washington Note and The Washington Independent, and it looks like the netroots is trying to send Obama a signal. The Clark for VP Facebook group has 5,527 supporters, and the Romney for VP group, which has been around all summer long, has a measly 238. #

• C-SPAN. C-SPAN RUN. C-SPAN is partnering with New Media Strategies to create a Convention Hub for both conventions which will allow searchable, linkable, and embeddable access to C-SPAN video coverage. There are some other cool features, like real-time tracking of credentialed state and national political bloggers that will be aggregated to enable users to get the
  latest online convention news and analysis, and yes, they will also be tracking what’s happening on Twitter. #

• And the Winner is... The Next Right’s Katherine Miller compares the websites for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. While she acknowledges the advantage the Left has online, Miller calls this “something of a rare win for the home team.” You can’t argue with her, the RNC website is the clear winner. #

The Candidates on the Web

• The Importance of Being Texted: The Op-Ed section of the New York Times features a fine piece today by Garrett Graff on the importance of Obama's text-messaging campaign. The effectiveness of text messages, Graff says, is that they mobilize people to act, unlike e-mail, blogs, YouTube, and Facebook. He believes the Obama campaign’s decision to reveal his VP via text is less about “proclaiming the selection and everything to do with getting out the vote on Election Day in November.” #

• Must Read on McCain's (ahem) "Tech Policy": Center for American Progress's Amanda Terkel has written a piece for Salon on Sen. John McCain’s tech policy (or lack thereof). Terkel argues that since McCain has not revealed any plan for the country’s technology infrastructure, he is ill equipped to lead. With issues that will need to be addressed in the near future, such as national broadband and net neutrality, Terkel writes that McCain will likely talk about “getting advanced telecommunications services to all Americans” will likely “allow the industry to determine what all this means.”#

TechCongress and Beyond

• Organizing Tips For Organizers: Open Left’s Matt Stoller has a few more words for the #dontGo movement. The movement issued a press release which reads “#dontGo Movement founder Eric Odom today called upon Americans nationwide to leave their homes for Washington, D.C. to protest high gasoline prices.” Stoller offers a quick lesson in organizing: “Real protest organizers tend to distinguish between themselves and 'Americans nationwide'. Paid staffers from conservative interest groups don't.” #

In Case You Haven't Noticed...

President Bush has been busy at the Beijing Olympics, and YouTubers have noticed. He apparently had time to visit with the women's beach volleyball team. Here it is, your moment of Zen. #

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