Daily Digest: Who Let Mitt Romney Out?

The Web on the Candidates

• The truce between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is long gone, and as things get more heated between the candidates the blogosphere is also getting fired up. The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas writes that “these are busy — and impassioned — times in the Afrosphere,” with many black bloggers reacting to racial under- and overtones that are making the Democratic contest an increasingly ugly affair. “In general, there are two blogospheres: the whiteosphere that everyone else links to and knows about. Then there’s us — black bloggers, Latino bloggers, Asian bloggers — who are trying to make sure our voices get heard,” blogger L.N. Rock told Vargas. As the mud continues to get slung, I sense we’ll continue to turn to all corners of web for some respite and clarity.

• Floridian bloggers are getting busy too, anticipating the upcoming primary there. The New York Times’ Ariel Alexovich links to a bunch of Sunshine State bloggers covering the Republican and Democratic races. There’s lots to chew on, from Mitt Romney dismissing the seriousness of the stock market collapse (“Aha. Is this a buying opportunity?”) to a good riddance post-mortem of Fred Thompson to anti-Clinton phone messages being left on Florida answering machines.

• Adding its own essential commentary to the 2008 election, The Onion has launched a new site, War for the White House, devoted to the race. It’s already hysterical: check out the candidate profiles (Mike Huckabee’s signature issue: “Retrieiving the Ark of the Covenant”) and hilarious headlines (“Bill Clinton: ‘Screw It, I’m Running For President’” that satirize the race in that inimitable, truthy style we’ve come to love.

• Some folks that liked Bill Clinton in the past aren’t happy with Bubba’s increased profile in this race. So a letter signed by “Pretty Much Everyone” has a request for the former President: “Just shut up.”

The Candidates on the Web

• After days of intense speculation about the future of his campaign (cough cough), Fred Thompson has finally dropped a bombshell: he’s dropping out of the presidential race. Really, we’re shocked. The Washington Post headline writers had one last chance to wield a stilted actor metaphor (Fred’s “No Longer Up for the Role of President”); online election observer Elaine Young is impressed that Thompson Twittered the news; and the Politico’s Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin offer a pretty damning post-mortem, writing that”The campaign became so dysfunctional that staffers just wanted it to be over so they could get on with their lives.”

• Meanwhile, techPresident contributor Mike Turk, who was a consultant on Fred Thompson's campaign has different perspective, blaming voters and a media establishment obsessed with style over substance. “We claim we want a candidate to talk seriously about the issues, to put forth bold policy proposals and debate on the merits of his plan. In a race crowded with style, Fred was all substance. Yet the people looked away.”

• To be or not to be transparent: The Bivings Report’s Todd Zeigler dissects Ron Paul’s unique fundraising strategy (his campaign releases all fundraising data in real time, allowing third parties to do what they will with it), calling it “the most interesting move a campaign has made this cycle.” (We think it’s interesting too, and have pushed other candidates to do the same). While Zeigler says he “certainly wouldn’t advise every candidate to mimic what the Paul campaign is doing,” he thinks there’s something there (Bivings worked on Fred Thompson’s campaign), including giving volunteers more ownership of the campaign and giving voters a reason to check back on the site more frequently. We agree that releasing information — which can lead to outright money bombs like those perpetrated by Trevor Lyman and co. — can, in balance, only do good for the campaigns. Meanwhile, Ron Paul quietly raised $2 million on MLK day.

• Two videos from Monday are busy making the rounds: Barack Obama’s speech from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (Ari Melber wrote a fantastic post about its popularity) and a clash between Obama and Hillary Clinton at Monday night’s debate. Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland documents how the fight between the campaigns is largely taking place online, thanks in part to the Clinton campaign’s rapid response site The Fact Hub and Obama's fact-check site. The Clinton campaign may not be great at engaging voters with the web, but they can sure use it to attack the opposition.

• A new report from Borrell & Associates says that almost $5 billion will be spent in this year’s election. Once we recover from the vertigo induced by that sickeningly-high number, it’s worth asking why only $20 million, or one-half of one percent of the total amount, will be spent online. MediaPost’s Mark Walsh writes that one possible answer is that the majority of affluent, older voters still watch more TV than get sucked into the intertubes. But perhaps online use is about more than sinking millions of dollars into political ads. “Candidate Web sites have become a key way to build grassroots support and raise money,” Walsh writes. It’s true — how much did Ron Paul spend on that online fundraising program again?

• Who let Mitt Romney out? There’s little we can say about this video that Garance Franke-Ruta suitably calls “cringe-inducing” that shows Mitt Romney gettin’ jiggy wit it.

In Case You Missed It…

They won’t tell you on TV, but people are watching Obama’s new speech. Disintermediation is alive on YouTube, writes Ari Melber.