My new report on the first year of Organizing for America is yielding some interesting responses, including notes from politicos who want to remain anonymous. Here is an email from a seasoned Democrat that suggests a broader context for Internet politics, and argues Obama's political operation has undercut its own ability to innovate:

Since OFA is a coherent organization, one can point to it and say 'this is unprecedented, and they are doing a great/good/bad job', but a post-Presidential period has happened before, forty something times.

It would be interesting to informally benchmark what's happening now against previous Presidential campaigns and what came out of them. There were a lot of important spinoffs of the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns on the right, not just generations of talent but new organization models like corporate PACs, direct mail, and New Right structures. In 2004, a lot of progressive activists on the various Dean, Clark, and Kerry bandwagons came into politics with a very specific set of initial searing experiences. And the people who ran the Obama campaign at the top came out of various campaigns from the 1980s and onward. Some campaigns held onto talent long-term, some didn't. Some had highly charged electoral energy, some didn't. Some were centralized, some weren't.

Political blog readers know that Condi Rice recently lost it.

Asked about her role advancing torture during the Bush administration in a meeting with college students, Rice claimed that no torture occurred in Guantanamo (false); Al Qaeda poses a greater threat than the axis in World War II (dubious); and -- this was big -- the President can make an act legal by authorizing it (official Frost/Nixon alert). Along the way, Rice also berated one college student, chiding him to "do your homework first" and read a report supporting her views -- an exchange that was unbecoming and uncomfortable to watch.

Harpers' Scott Horton already demolished Rice's arguments, so I won't repeat his points here. But this incident also shows the prospects for what we might call a substantive Macaca Moment - using YouTube and citizen media to scrutinize our leaders on the issues, not gaffes.

Maybe there weren't that many "P.U.M.A.s" after all. A new Harvard study -- from some PDF friends at Berkman -- reports that male voters displayed "in-group" bias for people who shared their candidate preference in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, while women voters did not.

The tendency to favor fellow Obama or Clinton supporters was measured through a generosity exercise, the "dictator game," which found that male voters chose to be more generous to others who supported their preferred candidate, be it Clinton or Obama. Women voters did not exhibit that tendency. "In-group favoritism existed in male Democrats after Clinton's concession in June," reports the study, and "persisted into August."

What about all those unity gestures during the Democratic Convention?

The McCain campaign quickly backtracked from its Tuesday announcement that the Republican presidential nominee invented the BlackBerry, explaining that the declaration was really all a joke. But the joke may be on McCain.

The McCain campaign quickly backtracked from its Tuesday announcement that the Republican presidential nominee invented the BlackBerry, explaining that the declaration was really all a joke. But the joke may be on McCain.

Why is the McCain Campaign reaching out to Daily Kos?

Blogging from the most important Internet gathering in the country.

From Obama's "bitter" brouhaha to making new rules for the superdelegates, Internet activists are upending this presidential campaign.

Obama makes YouTube history with the most watched presidential campaign video ever -- and beats cable news along the way.

The "straight talking" Senator beats both Democrats in unfiltered web commentary.