Daily Digest: Obama Rocks Jefferson-Jackson and the Web Responds
BY Joshua Levy | Monday, November 12 2007
The Web on the Candidates
-
In an editorial in this Sunday’s Boston Globe, social media advocate and journalist Dan Gillmor laments the state of the presidential debates and suggests ways “to bring debating into the new century (we’ve been experimenting ourselves!). One idea: produce a 21st-century version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which the candidates produce one-on-one debates and put the videos online for us mash up. It seems clear that the present format of televised debates has reached a dead-end. It’s up to all of us, Gillmor says, to come up with something better.
-
While most of the candidates at least pay lip service to the importance of technology in their campaigns, which one will have the most tech-friendly policy? “The Silicon Valley is looking for a candidate who really gets it—someone who understands how all the public policy pieces fit together,” a Google spokesperson told eWeek’s Roy Mark. Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton have come out in support of net neutrality, and while John McCain and other Republicans argue against neutrality (“When you control the pipe, you should be able to get profit from your investment,” McCain has said), he does stand against internet taxes. Public policy aside, only Ron Paul seems to understand the fundamental driving force behind the internet and politics: people.
-
Web 2.0 un-guru Karl Rove, speaking at last week’s Yahoo conference on politics and the web, mentioned that the failure of Ned Lamont to win the Senate seat after a much-publicized people-powered campaign in Connecticut signaled a failure of the netroots. But Mark Pazniokas, writing at the Hartford Courant’s Capitol Watch blog, quickly reminds us that political outcomes are the result of a number of factors. “It’s hard for me to see the Lamont campaign as a pure test of online politics, if ever there can be such a thing,” Pazniokas writes. You mean Rove was just pushing a partisan point rather than dispassionately describing politics? I’m shocked.
-
The fourth most-digged article on digg’s “2008 U.S. Elections” page — following articles about John McCain being broke and Pat Buchanan opposing Rudy Giuliani’s support for Israel — is titled “Ron Paul spammer finally caught…here is a picture of the guy.” Since I’d read Wired’s stories on Ron Paul spammers, I was curious about what this single person looked like. Well, the joke was on me (and 4,450 other people who dugg the post). The link takes you to an image on Flickr of a Paul supporters at a rally. Those tricky Paulites, always playing with expectations.
The Candidates on the Web
-
By several accounts, Barack Obama rocked the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa this weekend. His campaign has been quick to capitalize on the positive response and the effect of having a reported 3,000 supporters (out of 9,000 total attendees) at the event. One video — a short clip surveying the landscape of supporters at Veterans Memorial Auditorium — was released with “remarkable speed,” according to the Politico’s Ben Smith, and, compared as it is on Smith’s blog to a canned video from John Edwards, it does a much better job of conveying the energy and enthusiasm in that auditorium that night.
-
Another online rapid-response moment won by Obama: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all had blog posts up immediately after the JJ event. Crystal Patterson, Clinton’s blogger, wrote a response at 1:01 am early Sunday, receiving 17 comments as of this morning. Edwards blogger George Stern posted a video of Edwards’ speech at 10:35 Saturday night; that post has received 39 comments. And Obama blogger Sam Graham-Felson posted the response of two Obama supporters at 1:05 am Sunday morning. That post has received 389 comments. That number is testament not only to the strong online community Obama has built (within his own walls, at least), but to the strong response his performance elicited across the board.
In Case You Missed It…
A recent report claims that only 1% of presidential race coverage focuses on the record and past performance of the candidates. As she works on an open letter to the reporters on political campaigns asking them work to change this, Zephyr Teachout is asking techPresident readers for help. What kind of reporting do we want to see?
The New York Times’ Katherine Seelye wrote a good article yesterday dissecting the Ron Paul fundraising phenomenon. The question at the center of the piece: can Paul effectively translate his online support into offline votes?
David All writes that Fred Thompson has launched a new user-generated content campaign called Be A Star. The more UGC the better, David writes.
As we go into the final few days of Round One of 10Questions, we’re hoping to add a bunch more videos to the mix — get taping!
Senators Pat Leahy, Arlen Specter, and Dick Durbin are co-sponsoring a new bill to help fight online identity theft, and yesterday they sent me an email about it. The message is great, the imagery, alas, is straight out of William Gibson. In a bad way.