I say it over and over and over again:

The Republican Party lost the Majority in both the House and Senate by a mere 82,000 votes spread out through key races throughout the country. That's it.

Most races in the House were lost by less than 1 percent - Rob Simmons in CT by less than 100 votes. George Allen, a one-time likely Presidential candidate, lost his Senate seat because he failed to grasp the importance of the modern world and faced a swarm of well-coordinated attacks from the Left.

The fact of the matter is that we're no longer talking about millions or even thousands of votes that decide an election - but handfuls. And the only way to tap the "Long Tail" of politics is through Web 2.0.

Let's dig in...

Increasingly, new tools are empowering local "amateur" campaign staffers to produce quality content centered around local people.

Friends, it’s Friday again and time for you to indulge in a little political web video action. This week, watch as PoliticsTV recaps some of the top moments from the primary/caucus races, Mitt lets the dogs out, the candidates join David Bowie in a call for change, Bill gets sleepy, Hillary and Barack go at each other, and more.

Also, YouTube YouChoose ‘08 is asking for your political opinions, analysis, commercials, or campaign trail footage in the run-up to Super Tuesday, so send in your stuff!

Watching the Obama campaign message, "Yes we can," morph into a music video and then once again into a user-generated participatory project is to see the beginnings of Web Politics 2.0.

Kentucky bloggers are taking back their state's Democratic Party, one wiki entry at a time.  This week Ben Carter and Joe Sonka, proprietors of the progressive Kentucky blog BlueGrassRoots, announced the creation of BlueGrassWiki.  The project aims to organize information about Kentucky's 120 county parties in order to "infiltrate" local leadership in upcoming party precinct elections.

I'm taking off tomorrow morning for London, England, where I'll be speaking along with techPresident blogger Michael Turk at "Politics Web 2.0," a two-day international conference hosted by the University of London, Royal Halloway. The conference features 120 papers organised into 41 panels, with more than 180 participants drawn from over 30 countries, and is probably a bit more academic than most of the events I tend to go to these days. My talk is titled, "The Revolution Will Be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America." What do you think I should cover?

I'm in a breakout session at the New Democratic Network's daylong conference on "New Tools, New Audiences," listening to Vijay Ravindran, the CTO of Catalist, talk about web 2.0 and its development of an "Enhanced Voter File." As usual, these are my rushed notes, and at best a good paraphrase of what was said, not direct quotation.

Our democracy is most effective when we have an informed citizenry. This does not just pertain to federal elections, but elections at all levels. Often, the local elections are the most important. The judges that you elect to superior court might be nominated for Supreme Court a few years from now. The people you send to state legislature may be running for federal office in no time. Who you help get experience at the local level shapes what happens at the federal level in all sorts of direct and indirect ways. Furthermore, it affects your life directly.

Wading through information on local elections is undoubtedly a pain in the ass. Sure, you're about to be inundated with pamphlets telling you which way to vote and if your local newspaper is still functioning, they will inevitably list who they want you to vote for. But is this really what it means to be informed? I think not. Rather than waiting to be told what to do, I vote that each and every one of you hosts a party where you leverage the collective intelligence of those around you.

Our democracy is most effective when we have an informed citizenry. This does not just pertain to federal elections, but elections at all levels. Often, the local elections are the most important. The judges that you elect to superior court might be nominated for Supreme Court a few years from now. The people you send to state legislature may be running for federal office in no time. Who you help get experience at the local level shapes what happens at the federal level in all sorts of direct and indirect ways. Furthermore, it affects your life directly.

Wading through information on local elections is undoubtedly a pain in the ass. Sure, you're about to be inundated with pamphlets telling you which way to vote and if your local newspaper is still functioning, they will inevitably list who they want you to vote for. But is this really what it means to be informed? I think not. Rather than waiting to be told what to do, I vote that each and every one of you hosts a party where you leverage the collective intelligence of those around you.

There's a fascinating story out of New Hamsphire today about what some savvy targeting of Facebook ads can accomplish in a local political race. A Dartmouth junior dropped just $51 -- less than the cost of a text book -- on Facebook ads. Through Facebook's ad targeting program, the ads only popped up for her Dartmouth classmates and students at Plymouth State University. Vanessa Sievers, class of 2010, ended by winning her race for Grafton County Treasurer by a 600 vote margin.