Archive: Year: 2008

Hugh Atkin, who made the "Changes" video we highlighted last Friday, mashing up the David Bowie song with all the candidates talking about "change," has a follow-up that's incredible: a mash-up of Senator Hillary Clinton's now famous emotional moment just before the New Hampshire with, get this, Tom Cruise talking about his passion for Scientology. The juxtapositions in their two monologues are absolutely eerie, and you'll enjoy the faux "Mission Impossible" guitar riff in the background too. "Clinton and Cruise - On the campaign trail" currently has just over 5,000 views, but Atkin's previous effort zoomed from just 6,000 when we cited it in our top videos of the week on Friday to more than 121,000 today. Atkin is a 23-year-old...

Hearty congratulations are in order for Julie Barko Germany, who has just been officially named the new director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) at George Washington University. Julie has been deputy director of IPDI since 2003 and acting director since its longtime leader Carol Darr stepped down last summer. IPDI sponsors the annual Politics Online conference in DC, which is taking place March 4-5 this year. I've been watching the conference come together and it looks like Julie and her team are pulling together a really stimulating mix of speakers and panels. Topics include: "Pervasive Politics: How Ubiquitous Technology will Change Politics & Government," "Long Tail Politics: How the Niche is Revolutionizing Politics," "User-Generated Content: Threat...

[Here's an excerpt of my and Andrew Rasiej's latest column in the Politico.com.] The way it looks now, there is a strong possibility that both the Democratic and Republican nomination contests are not going to be resolved with a quick knockout blow that gives one contender in either party the momentum to force his or her opponents to drop out. Instead, we are heading into territory not charted in modern political times, with the leading contenders on a long slog toward the conventions — and in need of new infusions of money and volunteers to help them chase down voters and, ultimately, delegates. We’ve watched the race closely, and while the presidential campaigns are all investing resources in well-designed websites, online fundraising and...

Looks like President Bush or one of his ghost-writers had time to post some "Trip Notes From the Middle East" that are almost bloggish in their style. Now we know who picks out the president's suits and ties. (Hat tips to Steve Klein and Amy Gahran.)...

Jonathan Alter has a fun scoop in Newsweek: a rare interview with Ross Perot, America's most reclusive political figure. Three things jumped out at me in the interview, which was mainly about Perot's dislike of John McCain: 1. The tiny Texan is still incredibly obsessed with the cause of America's Vietnam POWs, and his belief that we left men behind there. Back in 1992, I worked with Thomas Ferguson on a long investigative piece he wrote for The Nation called "The Lost Crusade of Ross Perot" (which unfortunately isn't available online). It's a long trip down thru the looking glass, if you want to understand Perot's deep dislike of people like McCain and the Bush family, but it's all bound up...

Time for another periodic look at grassroots activity being generated by the top Democratic campaigns, which give their supporters online tools to organize and advertise local house parties, fundraisers, phone-banking and the like. With Nevada, South Carolina and then the February 5 mega-primary states coming up soon, I looked for events within 100 miles of Las Vegas and Raleigh, and then turned my attention to the major cities in the big primary states. The bottom line? Obama's supporters are blowing Clinton and Edwards away. Location Clinton Obama Edwards Las Vegas, 89110 1 8 0 Raleigh, 27601 1 6 0 San Diego, 92122 6 55 30 Los Angeles, 90012 8 170 0 San Francisco, 94101 9 189 29 Phoenix, 85014 1 5 0 Denver, 80201 16 87 12 Atlanta, 30301 20 37 3 Little Rock, 72201 4 7 0 Chicago, 60601 3 43 5 Cambridge, 02138 16 52 3 Minneapolis, 55401 5 37 3 St. Louis, 63101 4 28 4 New York, 10011 13 292 0 Here's a look at Obama's event map for the San Francisco area:...

If you're a blogger, it's not too late to apply for credentials to attend the Democratic convention in Denver, Jason Rosenberg tells me. Rosenberg is the convention's online director, and he called me yesterday to make sure techPresident got its application in. (The deadline is April 15.) The DNCC will be credentialing one blogger from every state and territory (56 in all), as well as an undetermined number of national bloggers. "We're looking for people with political impact," Rosenberg says, adding that bloggers have to demonstrate that by listing their Technorati rank, including at least five links to political posts they've written. Only bloggers who have been active for at least six months and have written at least 120 political posts...

Before I started writing about the intersection of technology and politics, I spent many years reporting on and analyzing the efforts of third-party and independent political candidates for office. Eventually that led to a book, "Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America", which was published in 2002, covering everything from the rise of Ross Perot and the election of Jesse Ventura to the Ralph Nader campaign of 2000 and the birth of NY's Working Families Party. I don't write as much about third parties anymore, for a couple of reasons. First, I think the main third parties in America today--the Greens and the Libertarians--are both far too ideological and inward-facing to be meaningful vehicles for change. Second, I think that,...

MoveOn.org Political Action and Catalist, a progressive voter file provider, have launched a new political application called "VotePoke" that is designed to help voters find out whether they, and their friends, are registered to vote. The first-of-its-kind site allows anyone to look up their voter registration status online and get registered quickly and easily. They can also invite their friends and family to view their status and quickly and easily register as well through Rock the Vote. The idea has promise, but the implementation left me with concerns. First of all, for something that is delving into such personal information, the site ought to be crystal clear about promising to not spam its users. You start out by filling out your...

Back in early September, Hillary Clinton's campaign made a big deal about how it had signed up its millionth supporter, a computer programmer from Georgia named Ron Wood. You can watch the video of Wood and his friend Michelle Smith meeting the Clintons, and traveling to a labor rally in Des Moines, here. Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle sent out an email bragging of the accomplishment: "What's the power of a million? It's the power to run a winning campaign; it's the power to restart the 21st century; it's the power to make history." As best as I can recall, that's the only metric of grassroots organizing the Clinton campaign has ever shared with the public. And the news that...