How much should lower-level political candidates try to adopt the multi-faceted internet strategies of the presidential campaigns?

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...

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.

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.

The Obama Administration took its first major steps toward implementing its promise to make government more open and transparent, with two presidential memoranda covering freedom of information, transparency and open government. The first memo directing all agencies to "adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure." This is a 180-degree turn from the policies of the Bush Administration. Most interesting for e-democracy fans: The memo says "all agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government."

The second memo reiterates those points, and adds more detail. It calls for information about government operations and decisions to be put online, and urges departments and agencies to get public feedback on the information of the greatest interest to the public. Even more promising, in an explicit tip-of-the-hat to "web 2.0," the memo states...

Forget all this talk this morning about the balance of the Supreme Court not shifting with the retirement announcement of David Souter. Change is indeed afoot.

How so? Well, for one thing, out goes Souter's fountain penned-opinions; Souter notoriously shied away from all things technological. And judging from the ages and experiences of the names being bandied about for Souter's replacement, in comes an emailing, Internet-using justice.

I make the point half in jest. But the context for it is that U.S. judicial branch comes in a distant third out of the three branches of government when it comes to embracing technology's potential. Both the White House/executive branch and Congress have far more fully integrated technology into how they go about fulfilling their missions. A changing of the guard -- along with the activism of tech-friendly justices present and past like John Roberts and Sandra Day O'Connor -- might be what sparks a modernization of the courts on the tech front. (Of course, there's a broader argument to be had about whether the courts should properly lag behind the rest of the country technologically, as part of its somewhat unique place as an institution apart from the rest of the political system and outside world. Then again, that argument is a bit of a tougher sell in the post-Bush v. Gore America.)

At the very least, maybe the new justice can help do something about SupremeCourtUS.gov, the seriously less than welcoming online home of the high court. (Plan your visit to the court, with this handy PDF!) Many high schools have more attractive and functional sites, which isn't really befitting an institution of the Supreme Court's stature.

One most likely meaningless but nonetheless fun social media indicator of how separated from Internet culture the Supreme Court is: how often photographs of the justices turn up in Flickr. Let's use, say, Rahm Emanuel as our baseline for level of Flickr exposure. The White House Chief of Staff pops up in 337 shots shared on the site. Even the most popular justice on Flickr, Chief Justice John Roberts, shows up in just 143 photos (filtered with the keyword "justice," as his is a common name). It goes down from there: Clarence Thomas, 119; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 73; Antonin Scalia, 69; John Paul Stevens, 40; Samuel Alito, 36; Souter: 23.

And Anthony Kennedy (also filtered with "justice") turns up in just 21 items on Flickr -- one photograph for every year he's spent on the Supreme Court.

(Photo by White House photographer Pete Souza)

How's this for a gig? The U.S. Pacific Command is looking for a contractor with expertise in social media to help support their public affairs operation. Did I mention USPACOM is based in Honolulu?

The Fleet Industrial Supply Center, Regional Contracting, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is seeking potential sources to provide qualified and experienced Social Media/Web 2.0 personnel with expertise with experience in marketing and communications concepts both online and via traditional media that shall support requirements supporting USPACOM Public Affairs. The Contractor shall be responsible for making recommendations to the USPACOM Chief Public Affairs on all aspects of social media and Web 2.0 applications and engagement to include identification of collaborative and social media sites and online communities, networks and technology applicable to USPACOM Public Affairs efforts, social media communication planning, and application of best social media/Web 2.0 communication practices and technology. The Contractor shall develop and execute a comprehensive marketing and socialization strategy for the USPACOM web presence in the languages of Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Bahasa Indonesia, Korean, and Thai.

(Thanks Shaun Dakin)