The Web on the Candidates

• Much of the blogosphere’s reaction to the New York Times piece about John McCain’s questionable relationships lobbyists centered on what was not printed. Josh Marshall argues that the only new information is the Times’ delicate mention of an alleged romantic relationship between McCain and Vicki Iseman, but there are some “pretty obvious lacunae” due to the “heavy legal muscle [that] was apparently brought to bear.” Meanwhile, Sarah Lai Stirland writes that bloggers have been more concerned with reports of McCain’s ties to lobbyists and ethical breaches. But who cares about that!? The big point is that Iseman looks eerily like Cindy McCain, right?

• Want some voter-generated content? We’ll give you some voter-generated content! Hillary Clinton supporters are stepping up online, posting video testaments to HRC on Hillary Speaks For Me. It’s a great site that feels authentic — for once! — and features videos from young people of all stripes. The demographic — young, multi-racial, hip — looks mighty, well, Barackian, which would be no accident if this was a campaign-generated site. But this is apparently the real thing. If the Clinton campaign is paying attention, they should send a link to every supporter and push this hard.

• According to new data from Compete, Barack Obama is absolutely destroying John McCain in terms of online attention. He’s getting more visitors to his website and Wikipedia entry by a margin of 3:1, and voters spend more hours perusing his YouTube channel by a factor of 36:1. Overall, Obama’s “FaceTime” — the total time voters spend online researching a candidate — is six times McCain’s. To compare this to offline action, we’re searching for accurate numbers of the popular vote in primaries and caucuses; an ongoing tally of online and offline stats might be telling.

• But, according to Wonkosphere, McCain has the biggest share of buzz is the blogosphere. That’s not necessarily a good thing; buzz is just mentions of your name, and liberal blogs have been eating up this lobbyist business.

• In the tradition of the web/art project Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle comes the Hillary version: Hillary Is Mom Jeans. But while the Obama site is a collection of random statements attesting to Obama’s ability to burrow into our national consciousness, the Hillary site — which includes submissions from readers — is a bit mean, with many of the phrases (“HILLARY OVERCOOKED YOUR STEAK”) claiming that Hillary broke something or made a mistake. But like the Obama site, this one also contains fun references pop-culture artifacts like “HILLARY WANTS YOU TO LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE.”

• A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend just launched a survey for her thesis, asking about users’ interest in political websites. If you have 10 minutes to burn this Friday afternoon, go ahead fill it out. If you have 10 more minutes to burn, try out this presidential preference test. It isn’t your typical “tell us what you think about Iraq” test — it’s gets deep into your subconscious, making your head hurt for days. Fun!

The Candidates on the Web

• “Life is all about perspective,” writes Meghan McCain in response to the New York Times piece about her father’s relationship with a lobbyist. “Politics is rough, but I absolutely adore my Dad and this campaign and have never, ever stopped believing in him. It’s just that simple.” Good to know. Check in to see some nice pics and Meghan and her fellow Blogettes living it up on the Straight Talk Express. A note to the webmaster: why no RSS feeds?

• Democrats Abroad — the “overseas branch of the US Democracy Party” — held their primary this week, allowing US citizens living abroad to vote online. Barack Obama won handily, taking 65.6% of the vote. Conveniently, someone from Antarctica voted, making the headline “From Antarctica to Zambia” irresistible.

In Case You Missed It…

Today we bring you a list of favorite videos in two parts: War of the Words and Very, Very Bad Songs, showing off the candidates’ tendency to borrow phrases and supporters’ tendency to produce some very funny, and bad, music videos.

According to Patrick Ruffini’s initial projections off his crowdsourced spreadsheet of Obama donations, Obama has already raised at least $45 million for February and is on track to raise $60 million for the month.

Colin Delany notices that the Obama campaign seems to have shifted at least some of its online ad buying towards a general election strategy, at least judging from a display ad on a decidedly non-political site

One of Zephyr Teachout’s biggest objections to the New York Times story on John McCain and lobbyists is what it implies for gender relations on the job in politics. The subtext is pretty clear: Older Man + Younger Woman = Res Ipsa Loquitor. If you are powerful, don’t spend time with women.