Ben Smith of Politico has a good point about the role of Organizing for America in the fight over Obama's health care reform. He writes: "Obama hasn't, as some hoped and feared, transformed the political landscape and changed the way politics is done. But within the legislative trench warfare that has defined this year, his campaign organization was a serious asset."

Indeed, the sheer numbers of actions tallied by OFA in the last ten days are impressive:

Fun for a Friday afternoon: Am I the only person who thinks Google Suggest is like a public Ouija board? Here's a glimpse into what the hive mind is thinking currently about our current and immediate past presidents, according to the gnomes behind Google Suggest (that is, what are the likeliest search phrases people are entering after the words "Will Barack Obama..." or "Will George Bush..."):

How big are the right-roots? And how do they stack up against the net-roots? I've been asking that question of various people lately, and also looking at some of the metrics available, as both sides of the American political spectrum continue to grow and flex their online muscles in this turbulent season. Here's some relevant data regarding their respective online donor bases.

Shorter Pew Internet study: "The public is clearly part of the news process now." Oh, and folks at TheNewYorkTimesFoxABCNBCCBSNPRDrudgeHuffingtonPostEtc: Forget about loyalty to your brand. Those days are gone.

There's a lot of interesting new data in the latest Pew Research Center/Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, which we're all chewing on this morning. After you get past the biggest headline, which is that people are largely infovores who graze everywhere for information, rather than sticking to one source loyally, here's what jumped out at me:

Yesterday's health care summit was also a very big day for CoverItLive, the Toronto company that provides easy-to-use and highly versatile live-blogging widgets that have become the industry go-to for high volume live events. Keith McSpurren, the company's CEO, tells me that across the many sites that used CiL to host discussions about the health care summit, "about 100,000 unique live readers made around 100,000 live comments during the events." He adds:

Was yesterday's all-day meeting at Blair House on health care reform a success? Well, by one measure, it was a huge success for the White House new media operation, which provided a live web stream to users all over the web. This tweet from new media director Macon Phillips sums it up:

"These dudes are old school communications people. They're playing the game the way they know how because it's been lucrative for them. And they're destroying the whole promise of the Obama Administration in the process."

It's been quite a 2010, hasn't it? From the Scott Brown upset in Massachusetts, setting Republican hearts aflutter everywhere; to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, upsetting small-d democrats and setting off calls for Constitutional amendments among liberals; to an anti-tax zealot dive-bombing his plane into an IRS building; war bulletins from Afghanistan and terrorists in federal court and anti-government Tea Party activists cropping up all over, one wonders if we aren't heading into our generation's version of 1968. Or perhaps I'm taking things a bit too seriously.

Based on an unconfirmed report on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment site that former President Bill Clinton and James Carville are supposedly planning a dirty-tricks campaign against seven or eight top leaders of the Tea Party movement, the Tea Party Patriots network has responded with an amusing and effective expression of solidarity.

A fast tip of the hat to White House deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin, who had this to say Friday at a forum on open government:

“I would be thrilled to make this a type of political competition ... to see who can be more radical in their openness, in their data distribution models ... trying to prove to the citizens they can run a better government,” reports Kim Hart of TheHill.com.