The Web on the Candidates

• The huge and influential black grassroots group Color of Change is circulating a petition “demanding that Democratic Party leadership and superdelegates uphold the integrity of the party and listen to the voice of voters” by allowing the popular vote (that is, pledged delegates) to decide the Democratic nominee. The subtext, of course, is Hillary Clinton’s angling for superdelegates, the only real shot she has at the nomination. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein points out, Color of Change has a list of more than 400,000 names, so this isn’t some hare-brained idea. Stein has more, including a link to a McClatchy piece suggesting that black voters will stay home in November if Clinton is the nominee. Could the Democratic rift get any deeper?

• Whoa. Check out this clip — courtesy of Firedoglake — of a man asking John McCain, "Is it true you called your wife a c@#t?” Off The Bus’ Keith Dinsmore was on the scene and got an in-depth interview with Marty Parrish, the questioner in question. Turns out Parrish was upset about a HuffPo piece — written by Anchorman writer and director Adam McKay — that described the 1992 incident in which McCain is alleged to have “dropped the C-word” (the story was first related in Cliff Shecter’s book The Real McCain). Just one request: can we please stop flinging around the C-bomb from now on?

• Also at Off The Bus (they’ve really been breaking some news lately!), Peter Dreier outs longtime Clinton friend and advisor Sidney Blumenthal as a cog in the Obama-smear-email machine. While Blumenthal isn’t the original source of the emails that attack “Obama’s character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations,” he “methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers — including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers — in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists.” Blumenthal, the alleged coiner of the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” seems to taking lessons from his old enemies. And Dreier names names of the recipients, a veritable who's who of elite journalism.

• Rachel Sterne’s GroundReport, which has been cornering the political livestreaming market all year, livestreamed Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the Indianapolis Star this week, and some online newspapers embedded the live feed. Based on that experience, Sterne has some ideas about how online papers could compete with TV. “Newspaper websites already have strong traffic in their markets, and typically provide all the media build-up to major live events,” she writes. “But at the moment of the event, they drop out of the process, allowing TV stations to cover the show, picking up afterwards. Now they can have it all.” It’s a great idea, and a natural extension of online journalism’s growing 24/7 role. This is indeed the future.

• Yesterday the Blogometer’s Iam Faerstein rounded up to blog-o-chatter about Hillary’s post-PA momentum and her subsequent rise in the polls, noting that progressive bloggers are all seeing a shift in the race in Clinton’s favor. Conservatives are too; Rush Limbaugh is still urging his listeners to vote for Clinton in the primaries. That means something, right?

• Lamont Williams, the possibly fake voice in robo-calls made by the Women’s Voices, Women Vote, which is being accused of using the calls to intentionally confuse voters in North Carolina, has a Twitter account! Ok, not really, but someone claiming to be Williams does, and he’s spitting out tweets like “Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you” at an alarming rate.

The Candidates on the Web

• Another sign that the Clinton campaign is, albeit belatedly (is that a palindrome or a falindrome?), getting it: It’s asking supporters draw up ideas for campaign t-shirts. But alas, the campaign is still taking the “fill out a form and say bye-bye” approach. Why not display the submissions they’ve received and ask the public to vote on their favorites? Why not just show off their favorites as they come in?

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