Larry Lessig and Joe Trippi take to Politico to announce that their "Donor Strike" has passed the one-million-dollar mark. Even if you like to play grouchy cynic, the Change Congress campaign is a creative demonstration of how activists can bundle together small caches of political power heretofore scattered amongst the citizenry. The deal is thus. Senators and Representatives either back the Fair Elections Now Act -- a bill that rewards candidates who depend on small-dollar donors -- or find themselves potential targets of a donor strike. Through FEC validation or self-reporting, Change Congress tallies how much strikees kicked in last cycle (and are, in theory, withholding this time around). Change Congress is estimating that Dianne Feinstein is out $260,000, Chuck Schumer is $113,000 poorer, and Nancy Pelosi's coffers are $57,000 lighter.

Ari Melber (The Nation) interviews Joe Trippi on what might be next.

How much is YouTube worth to a presidential campaign? We got some friends to run the numbers for Obama and McCain, and the numbers may astound you.

This photo is crying out for a good caption. Any suggestions? (It's from Joe Trippi's annual Memorial Day clambake.)

Photo after the jump.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Joe Trippi a week ago, as we both were in DC for the launch of Larry Lessig's new Change-Congress project. (Joe is working with Larry on CC, and the Sunlight Foundation, which I consult for, was co-sponsoring Larry's speech). If you watch closely, you can see Larry in the background of the first video, in fact. In general, the lack of production values suggests I should stick to my day job, I know. But we covered a lot of interesting ground, as you'll see...

I'm at the National Press Club for the launch of Stanford Prof. Larry Lessig's new project, Change-Congress.org. He's here as part of Sunshine Week, and his speech is co-sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation (which I consult for) as well as the Omidyar Network. As you may know, last year, Lessig decided to shift his focus from the fight for free culture to the fight for a clean government. Here are my notes on his talk, paraphrasing as best as I can...

Trippi warns about Obama's blue-collar support; Jerome Armstrong mocks Chris Bowers; will the "emerging church" go for Obama?; Lessig aims to Change-Congress; Blogger flophouses in DC make the front page; inside Obama's Texas field operation; Ron Paul says he's still running; and we add the VP field to our charts.

It's the big day! We'll be liveblogging here at techPres starting at around 7:30; "if web traffic equalled votes.." If only!; Barack Obama is officially the hockey-stick candidate; MTV's Street Team '08 fans out across the country; a majority of Facebook users tell pollsters that Hillary Clinton would be a bad choice for president; Tim Wu on Net neutrality and Obama; two polls from LinkedIn and MySpace give show a preference for Obama; Noam Scheiber interviews Joe Trippi; Obama is encouraging supporters to email and call their friends, even if they're too busy watching the "Yes We Can" video; a look at the candidates use of technology in the final push before Super Tuesday; and why Fred Thompson's blog was good, even if his campaign, er, wasn't.

Joe Trippi is one of the few political consultants who speaks frankly, even to the detriment of his clients, and loves democracy even more than he loves politics. I caught up with him for an hour-long conversation about his work for the John Edwards campaign, why Hillary Clinton might be the Howard Dean of 2008, and how the Iowa caucus is like the Internet.

There's nothing wrong with political campaigns trying to build up their email lists. Nor is there anything wrong with doing it by riding the news and connecting their campaign priorities to voters' concerns. But when is someone going to do more than aggrandize their own power, and actually do something that builds real people power?