Daily Digest: Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday

The Web on the Candidates

• Arbiter of Silicon Valley cool TechCrunch has announced the winners of its TechCrunch Tech President Primaries (no relation to this fair site...). For the Democrats, it’s Barack Obama, who, according to site founder Michael Arrington, "has put more time and effort into defining his technology policies than any other candidate.” The GOP pick is John McCain, though Arrington writes that none of the Republicans are "the perfect candidate." But McCain is better than the rest, making it clear that he'll "address inequities that arise from his hands-off policies on net neutrality and mobile allocations, which other Republican candidates refuse to do."

• Yesterday we mentioned that directly after South Carolina Barack Obama was pulling in money at a rate of $500,000 per hour. According to a memo from campaign manager David Plouffe, that's translated into a $4 million haul over the weekend (not quite $500,000/hour, but who's counting?). Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland was on the story, also noting that the Obama campaign is expecting a protracted battle for the nomination and is using the cash to staff post-February 5th states.

• The video of Obama's South Carolina victory speech was also the most-viewed video on YouTube yesterday, even topping a topless Britney Spears, writes techPresident contributor Ari Melber at The Nation. But Melber won't link to the Spears video, citing "decency" or something.

• The Center for Independent Media has launched a new site, the Washington Independent, that seeks to combine "the reporting, accuracy and fairness of traditional journalism with the speed, voice and community of the Web." The group has also launched the Iowa Independent, the Minnesota Monitor, and Colorado Confidential; they're all superb sites that are busily re-imagining what online political journalism can look like.

• Eric Frenchman, a GOP consultant with Connell Donatelli, Inc., which is working on the McCain campaign, writes a sharp critique of Republican political bloggers on his blog Pardon My French, basically saying that "the majority of them seem over the top, fake, and willing to write just about anything." Unfortunately he doesn't name many names, other than to praise a few top rightwing bloggers who he feels doesn't deserve that criticism, like Michelle Malkin and Jonathan Mark.

• Support your local blogger: over the next two weeks Progressive blog MyDD is holding a fundraiser for itself. Site founder Jermoe Armstrong writes that he's mainly looking for funds to support bloggers Todd Beeton and Jonathan Singer as they cover the 2008 race, since he's busy being a family man and paying the bills. Bo-ring! But seriously, traveling helps Singer and Beeton continue to close the gap between bloggers and journalists, giving them "the access to gain insight they wouldn't get just blogging at home." If you're a liberal who supports independent blogging, consider the gift of reverse-chronologically arranged content.

• Let no kiss (or hug) go unrecorded. First it was McCain and Bush, and Lieberman and Bush, now it's Shays and Bush.

The Candidates on the Web

• The community blog on John Edwards' site has always been vibrant, with supporters given free reign to write about their candidate and the race in any way they wish. This morning one supporter used the forum to aim some constructive criticism at senior advisor Joe Trippi. "Every time I've seen Joe Trippi get a precious few seconds to talk on the MSM, he's been a mess!," wrote "pithy." "Aside from always looking disheveled, like he was just yanked from painting posters, he just can't get JRE's message out without floundering, stammering and looking like a deer in the headlights. I'm sure Joe is brilliant at strategy, but as a spokesperson, he's terrible." Ouch. Personally, I like Trippi's Twitter feed, which is more active the more under the weather Trippi feels.

• GodTube, the Christian YouTube clone, has been steadily gaining an audience with its wholesome and religious fare (the subtitle is "Broadcast Him"). So naturally Mike Huckabee -- who is both a Christian conservative and a relatively web-savvy candidate -- showed his support for the Christian site. "This myth that Christians oughta sort of keep to themselves in the church and never get outside," he says, "that's like saying let's never let the salt get on the things that are spoiling..." In a GodTube poll of candidate support, 39.1% say they're for Huck, but Barack Obama is in second place with 22.2% of the vote. If Obama makes it to the general and Huckabee drops out, will we see religious voters switch sides? (hat tip to Sarah at Threat Level)

• On the day of the Florida primary, the online attacks between John McCain and Mitt Romney remain heated. This time, McCain has thrown up a video that follows a path tread by many a Mitt opponent, pitting Mitt against former versions of himself. The message is nothing new, but this time it's coming directly from the McCain campaign, showing just how tight this race really is.

• Sure there's Florida, but what about Ron Paul? A new video from the Congressman updates hungry supporters about his campaign. After a wonderfully out-of-context theme song straight outta Masterpiece Theatre, Paul his campaign's discusses successes and challenges, campaign shakeups, and the future. Like most Paul communiques, it's direct and off-kilter at the same time.

In Case You Missed It…

First Macworld, now the State of the Union. Several times during tonight's SOTU address Twitter's servers were overloaded, preventing users of the popular micro-blogging service from sending or receiving tweets for several minutes at a time. Michael Whitney takes Twitter to task.

Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee hope that the MTV/MySpace Candidate Dialogue can increase their appeal to young voters on Super Tuesday. Mike Connery offers a sneak peek of what to expect.

The outcome of South Carolina's Democratic Primary may be no surprise to those of you following Yahoo's Political Dashboard, who would have have seen Barack Obama dominate online buzz in the run-up to the South Carolina primary. But what explains Obama's skyrocketing numbers and Hillary's dip on the day of the primary?

Mike Turk takes a closer look at the new BarackObama.com and finds some readability issues, and while the tools he provides are quite good, the implementation is a bit off.