The last time I saw political bloggers across the spectrum agreeing about anything, it was in opposition to some overly restrictive notions emanating from the Federal Elections Commission about regulating political speech online. And we know how that story ended, with the FEC doing an about-face (and for good reason). Now the same alignment seems to be forming in response to proposed regulations from the Federal Trade Commission, which wants to police bloggers--but not traditional media outlets--who post testimonials, endorsements or reviews of products.

Jeff Jarvis is now up, keynoting at the Government Web Managers Conference. As with prior posts, my notes that follow are semi-verbatim but not be taken as exact quotations, though when I put something in quotes, it's a good rendition of what someone said. My comments and observations are in [brackets].

DNC Day 2 Edition

Obama texts his supporters his choice of VP, is Obama the first "cybergenic" candidate?, What will McCain do for VP?, Obama hits back at two McCain ads, the blogs respond to Edwards' extramarital affair, Bush enjoys women's beach volleyball, and Barack gets "Rick Rolled"

Clay Shirky talks to Salon about online organizing, Obama Girl, and more; polls show Obama Girl is getting tiresome; the Hillary Clinton Deathwatch is keeping a close eye on Hillary's chances; Jeff Jarvis asks who should be the nation's CTO; now all of the candidates have produced versions of Hillary's "3am" ad; The John McCain Facebook Challenge encourages Republicans to befriend the McCainiac; and McCain's campaign hires a new web guru.

Patchwork Nation dispenses with the red/blue state divide; Obama and the coming digital presidency; Jeff Jarvis on what Google would do; online attention to Obama raises questions; shocker: IT workers split between McCain and Obama; a random example of old media/new media advertising; Hillary Clinton running from sniper fire in Bosnia? A video shows otherwise; and the girl in Clinton's "3am" ad is an Obama precinct captain.

Liberal bloggers are divided about Hillary Clinton's aggressive campaign tactics; maybe Peter Daou is finding success at Daily Kos after all; in a cosmic quest for accurate predictions, Huffpostrology combines polling data and astrology; new widgets from MAPLight let voters track congressional fundraising; Jeff Jarvis catches up with British Conservative leader David Cameron; and Dennis Kucinich drops out.

Jeff Jarvis rounds up the many, many ways to chop, splice, and parse online data about the elections; General JC Christian produces a Second Life parody site devoted to Mike Huckabee; Al Qaeda asks its members to submit questions to its #2 leader; what Star Wars characters do the candidates remind you of?; Ron Paul launches an effort to recruit precinct captains; and RNC online operations guy Cyrus Krohn gets a nice puff piece.

It's time to set the record straight on the history of online political debates, in the wake of press reports and claims that this week's Yahoo!/HuffingtonPost/Slate debate was the first.

The Web on the Candidates

A good back-and-forth about the successes, failures, merits, and results of the CNN/YouTube debate is taking place over at Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine. In a long, (maybe too) complicated discussion, Jarvis reiterates his disappointment in the debate, thinking that "TV got in the way" of the authenticity promised by YouTube's participation. He goes head-to-head with BBC'er Kevin Marsh, who called the debate a "terrific clash... between two media cultures; old-style 'big journalism' and new-style 'citizen media.'" Marsh then calls Jarvis an "uber-zealot" who wants to "bring video-sharing into the democratic process." Jarvis responds, the gloves come off, Marsh shows up in the comments, and another commenter brings things things back to earth.

A new site called Map the Candidates uses Google Maps and pulls in information from YouTube, online news sources, and candidate web sites to... map the candidates. You can view individuals candidates' paths across the country (well, across the early primary states) or look at all of the candidates' paths together, which can get cluttered pretty quickly. It's very similar to the Washington Post's Campaign Tracker, but could actually prove more useful. A good mashup.