Daily Digest: The Youth are a-Hillblazin'!

The Web on the Candidates

• Strange bedfellows, indeed. A coalition that includes right-wing bloggers and MoveOn (yes, that MoveOn) is challenging Fox News’ refusal to allow debate footage to be freely used online. In a press release sent by MoveOn, RedState.com’s Eric Erickson (yes, you read that correctly) wrote, “Every other news organization has liberated their debate footage and FOX should either be no different or no longer have the privilege of airing debates.” Hopefully the bi-partisan pressure will force Fox to act in the public interest; in the meantime we can imagine what a phone call between Erickson and, say, Tom Mattzie might have sounded like.

• Political Base, the site that tracks the candidates’ stands on the issues and fundraising data, has released another piece of data fun. They’ve mapped political contributions on to a Google maps, making it easy to see exactly how much has been contributed to the candidates from all around the country. Only mid-sized to big cities are represented at the moment, but they alone provide plenty of data to pore through.

• Move over Second Life, in politics it’s all about Halo 3. Three Ron Paul supporters are playing video games to raise money for their candidate. The Raw Story’s Jason Rhyne writes that three anonymous college students “have committed to playing the massively popular Halo 3 video game for 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” and they’re broadcasting themselves online. Twelve hours a day, every day? How will they find time to get on MySpace, YouTube, or Second Life?

• A new social networking site (it calls itself a “conversation community) called Why08 promises to give voters of all stripes a place to chat about the candidates and show their support. It’s pretty simple, really. You create a profile, choose a candidate to support, and state your reason why. You can also view a candidate profile and choose to support or oppose that candidate. (If you support, the candidate gets a halo on his or her head; if you oppose, it’s devil horns. Nice.) Users can then comment on your statement and the conversation will, hopefully, begin. Like all new sites, however, it will only succeed if it gets a critical mass of participation. We will see.

• “Transparency will be an important vehicle for reform in today’s information age,” writes Eliza Krigman at Opportunity08, a project of the Brookings Institution and ABC News. It's proving to be a big issue for the 2008 election, so Krigman adapted a Sunlight Foundation survey of the transparency the presidential candidates in Congress. Her results: "Of all of the officially declared candidates, Ron Paul came out on top by having the only website to list all of the principals on his campaign staff. None of the candidates disclosed information about their financial contributors, included a full CV listing all previous employment with no gaps in time, or posted a full schedule (not just upcoming public events.)" (TechPresident’s Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej are advisors to Sunlight).

The Candidates on the Web

• At the start of the quarter, Ron Paul set a goal of raising $12 million by the end of the year. He’s so far falling short of that number, raising about $2.6 million by the end of October. But he’s still raising money, and as Susan Davis at the Wall Street Journal notes, “With each click of the refresh button on the site his money is going up in small increments, presumably from the individual small donor base he has cultivated on the Internet.” The Post piece also features a clip from Paul’s appearance on the Tonight Show this week, a testament to his continuing climb into the mainstream.

• Hillary Clinton has launched a new website for young supporters focusing on organizing and outreach. Called Hillblazers, it’s a simple site connecting young voters to local events, student groups, text campaigns, and voter registration. I kind of like it; it’s refreshing to see a simple layout and design in this era of overstuffed candidate sites. I’m not sure about the name “Hillblazers” though; it evokes a certain pharmacological pastime enjoyed by youth across the land…

• It looks like Stephen Colbert, half-serious presidential candidate and king of Facebook support, may have to end his nascent campaign. The South Carolina Democratic Party has voted to keep his name off of the ballot there, the only state in which he was running. Hopefully Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich will continue to carry the comedic torch at Democratic events.

In Case You Missed It…

Check out our favorite political videos of the week! Watch as Fred Thompson dismisses a simple question from a simple citizen, complicated cookies are explained nice and easy, Barack Obama struts his stuff on Ellen, Hillary Clinton stumbles on the driver’s license issue, and the Daily Show asks the most important question facing America today.

Over at 10Questions, it’s halfway through Round One and we’ve tallied more than 53,000 votes from nearly 17,000 participants, and the number of video questions on the site now stands at 142. Plus, we’ve tweaked the home page to hopefully help return visitors find and vote on more videos. More news here.