The Web on the Candidates

OpenSecrets.org has just released first-quarter expenditure numbers for all of the candidates, and while it would take weeks to analyze the amount of data they've released, Chris Bowers has a good analysis going. Barack Obama spent more than the others in almost all of the categories, and he far and away spent the most on "Internet Media" -- $299,000 -- which, as Bowers notes, is five times more than the rest of the field combined.

Joe Klein is frustrated that smart political blogging "is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere," and he points to the "spitballs" aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for their positions on the Iraq war as evidence. "Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded," he writes, explaining that only voted against the recent Iraq resolution because they were bullied by anti-war bloggers (the Netroots?). This, Klein says, its dangerous because Democratic candidates are becoming beholden to the base in the same way that the GOP embraced conservative radio in the '90s. (via Election Geek)

The Web on the Candidates

Taking a cue from a question he was asked at the Politics Online conference last week, Jerome Armstrong offers a "succinct guide for doing R&D in the campaign" on MyDD. The top three suggestions: "look out onto the Internet for what's being done... in order to create innovation, look out at what's happening in areas outside of political campaign websites."; "don't try everything, less is more... doing one thing right, instead of a dozen things half-assed, makes the difference between a signal getting through and clutter lost in the shuffle."; and "work with the brand that is your candidate."

Another Politics Online post-mortem: Alex Clover from the Bivings Report lists his highlights from last week's Politics Online conference, which include Jerome Armstrong on Second Life, Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini on online only-events, Chuck DeFeo of Townhall (and now of techPresident) on "flooding the zone," and Joe Trippi on the end of big money. It's another great synopsis of this year's conference.