Here's something else that Hillary Clinton said at Yearly Kos, something that had nothing to do with lobbyists but was a similiar peek into her governing psyche. In her morning breakout session, Clinton warmed my little geek heart with her offhanded praise for the idea of electronic school records. It was a reminder that a true Tech President would see beyond a free and open Internet to a fleshed-out vision of how hard a wired government and nation could rock.

The open-sourcing of debate planning; the debate on the online Right; the demographics of the online Left; the ongoing decline of newspapers; another exploitative video; and whose website is winning the most attention...

Gender is seeping into discussion of the netroots in a major way. As today’s Washington Post quotes Yearly Kos Executive Director Gina Cooper on her conference: "It's mostly white. More male than female," says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. "It's not very diverse."

Indeed, there’s a growing chorus bubbling up online. I think Garance Franke-Ruta summed it up brilliantly with the title of her recent Yearly Kos panel: “Blogging while Female.” Political blogging, while female, is not the norm.

The Web on the Candidates

Want to ask the Democratic candidates a question? Have the rules of YouTube/CNN debate got you down? Try submitting a question to the Yearly Kos website. The annual netroots conference is soliciting submissions from readers for questions that will be asked of the candidates at a presidential forum (Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson are all slated to attend), but, as Jeffrey Feldman writes, because the organizers can't ask every submitted question, Feldman suggest questioners turn to their communities. "Thinking about submitting a question? Try posting a diary on the subject first, leading a discussion with a group of people interested in your topic, and then working together to generate a few great questions." This approach ensures that "each question we pose will come from individuals, as well as the online communities where we participate in political debate." Maybe YouTube and CNN -- who are restricting the YouTube community's ability to vote for its favorite submitted questions for next week's debate -- could take a cue from this approach.

The Candidates on the Web
Rudy Giuliani is participating in YouTube's Spotlight series this week, and I have no choice but to be honest: it's probably the worst entry in the series thus far. I'm actually wondering if Rudy knows what this whole YouTube whatchamacallit is in the first place. In his video, which resembles a late-night infomercial, complete with cheesy royalty-free music, Rudy outlines the thinking behind his 12 Commitments pledge. "Leadership is all about being willing to express ideas and being willing to tell people the direction in which you believe the country should go... it's part of being honest in politics, it's part of being direct in politics," he says in his usual rapidfire manner. The commitments themselves cover a range of conservative talking points, from "I will keep America on offense [sic] in the Terrorist's War on us" to "I will cut taxes and reform the tax code." So how can we, the voters, participate in this week's Spotlight? Does he want us to send in videos expressing our commitments? Does he want our opinions on his? Sort of. Rudy hurriedly finishes the video with a disengenous-sounding ask to visit his site. "Please contact us at Rudys12Commitments.com. We would love to have your ideas, your thoughts about our 12 Commitments, the things you can see, uh, that we should add to it, the improvements, the cr... whatever you have, just please contact us at Rudys12Commitments.com. Thank you very much," he says quickly. At the site, you can sign a "12 Commitments Pledge," make a contribution, or fill out a form to let the campaign know what you think. Your idea goes straight to the campaign; no other supporter will see it, and it's as removed from YouTube as can be. Sigh.