The Web on the Candidates

• As we mentioned a few days ago, David Colarusso's Community Counts added a new feature that lets voters vote for their favorite video submissions for the upcoming CNN/YouTube Democratic debate. Now Michael Falcone at the New York Times' Caucus has picked up the story, using the feature to find his favorite submitted videos. "In bedrooms, dorm rooms, offices and backyards, the presidential candidates are getting a virtual grilling by a motley group who are among the first to submit video questions for consideration on the CNN-YouTube presidential debate next month," Falcone writes. Some of the videos are wacky, like "Bjorn," who wears a viking helmet and asks how the candidates will deal with immigration, and many like Al Cannistraro are on-point. "What moral and political principles, if any, would guide the development of your own administration’s national security strategy?" he asks. The best way to check watch these all at once is to visit Colarusso's site; he's even added a sidebar highlighting the least-voted-for videos to make sure everything gets seen.
• Ben Smith at the Politico writes that Hillary Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn, has been caught using polls to test out negative attacks on John Edwards and Barack Obama. While this is common practice among campaign pollsters, the world in which they operate has changed. Says Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com, "what the Internet has changed is that 10 or 20 years ago, campaigns assumed that if they called a thousand people and shared with them a test of their most closely held strategic options that it was a secret. The Internet changes the ability of a campaign to keep this testing process secret. It makes it very easy for a handful of respondents to connect with reporters who connect with millions of voters."
• Blog P.I. William Beutler has noticed that the Ron Paul machine -- the anonymous collection of online activists who quickly flock to and publicize any mention of the Congressman's name -- has taken a leave of Digg, the news-voting site that has been, at times, overtaken by Paul supporters. Compared to the flood of Paul-related stories submitted to the site after the first two Republican debates, today there's barely a trickle. "Where has the movement gone?" wonders Beutler. He thinks they've simply shifted their focus to the dozens of other social sites utilized by Paul and his supporters.
• Oliver Willis writes that a video of a recent day-long fundraiser for Mitt Romney may not have the effect intended by the campaign. "What I noticed is that in order to communicate the "bigness" of the occasion they rented out Boston Garden and Fenway Park. But its empty. If you're going to hold a big free event at a sports venue, I don't think you communicate momentum by having an empty stadium," writes Willis.
• This week techPresident's Micah Sifry published a piece on Michael Bloomberg for the Nation. While he thinks the chances of Bloomberg actually running are low, he does see Bloomberg wanting to influence the race. "All he has to do is talk about his willingness to spend a half-billion dollars on a possible bid, visit some swing states every now and then and make a speech about how it's more important to deliver effective government than score partisan points, and perhaps put a few consultants on retainer (I know of two people who keep themselves on call for him), and he will have maximized his leverage over the national debate at minimal cost," Micah writes. Unfortunately, while the blogosphere shows interest in a Bloomberg candidacy, his interest in using the web is totally top-down. "He's talking at us, not with us. He may have made his money selling high-priced computer terminals and data, but his approach to technology and the Internet is all top-down." Read more here.

The Candidates on the Web

• Chris Dodd's new Spotlight video, in which he asks voters to videotape themselves asking their Senators about his Iraq war amendment, is getting some traction in the blogosphere. The idea of a "Dodd army, armed with cameras" is appealing to bloggers fed up with the news media's intense focus on things like Paris Hilton to the detriment of larger, more important issues. And some commenters over at Firedoglake have been proposing meeting up to go visit their Senators in groups. We hope to see great results from this.