There seems to be no limit to the power of the people to use the internet to express themselves politically, artistically, ... you name it. Continuing in my emerging pattern of video show-n-tell, check out Hillary's Downfall. You can watch the video and vote on whether you find it offensive on this Democratic Underground post. I thought it was offensive, but I was laughing too hard to cast my vote.

A Washington State state delegate named Suzi LeVine, looking for an easy way to organize her state’s Obama delegates, turned to free wiki service Wetpaint, which helped her quickly build the Barack Obama Delegates site. This is one of those sites that serve such an obvious function that we wonder how the delegates could live without it. So why haven’t supporters of the other candidates done anything similar?

An interesting new GOP anti-Obama site, CanWeAsk.com mixes social media techniques and video to try to undermine Obama's credibility. But does the featured video actually backfire?

I'm in a breakout session at the New Democratic Network's daylong conference on "New Tools, New Audiences," listening to Vijay Ravindran, the CTO of Catalist, talk about web 2.0 and its development of an "Enhanced Voter File." As usual, these are my rushed notes, and at best a good paraphrase of what was said, not direct quotation.

Clinton is losing friends on MySpace, and traffic to her website seems to be crashing. Meanwhile, the interwebs are having a ball with "When Obama Wins."

Jose Antonio Vargas thinks Barack Obama's early popularity online pointed to his electoral success; Color of Change hits Hillary for "race-baiting"; Al Franken is annoyed by a pesky blogger; the New York Times botches superdelegate data, and Congresspedia gets it right; super-conservative Richard Viguerie launches anti-John McCain site; Micah Sifry livestreamed on Qik; Obama launches a huge voter registration drive; the RNC hits Obama with an attack ad, almost securing him as the Democratic nominee in the process; and Obama wins an award for its texting smarts

Ah Friday. Brew some coffee. Take a load off. Let YouTube take over. Watch as Mike Gravel sweeps Obama girl off her feet; as GOOD shows us where the money comes from in this campaign; as Cobra Commander asks for you vote; as the GOP attacks Barack Obama's "empty rhetoric"; as Hillary Clinton raps about the campaign; as Obama and Clinton compete to control the universe; and much more. It's nice to have you here.

Conservative strategists team up to produce a new grassroots site for the right; some conservative bloggers are supporting Barack Obama, and some netroots bloggers are going for Clinton, while cats and dogs start living together; anti-Obama hoax emails are still making the rounds; a new Brave New Films video ties John McCain to another radical pastor; Obama gets vampiric in a new musical; Yes we shall... support Cobra Commander for president; Hillary Clinton has a secret meeting with a party official, and we have the footage; and Andrew Rasiej is crowned as a "czar" of the New York tech scene.

A new meme is spreading around the Tubes, and it’s a good one. Clay Shirky, part sociologist and part technologist, has coined the term “Cognitive Surplus”. Shirky, the author of the must-read Here Comes Everybody, gave a talk the other week on the topic. The implications of this idea in the political arena are already becoming apparent, and the Obama campaign seems to be the most able to harness it.

As the dust settles on the Democratic primary fight, I think more people are going to be turning their attention to understanding the significance of the new kind of political machine the Obama campaign has been building. Matt Stoller, one of my favorite netroots writers, has a great stab in this direction over on OpenLeft with a post he titled "Obama's Consolidation of the Party." I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions about Obama's dominating and remaking the Democratic Party, but there's surely huge potential in their blending of top-down message discipline, net-centric outreach, Alinsky-UFW-Ganz-inspired field work, Camp Obama trainings, Obama Organizing Fellows, and a new 50-state voter registration effort.

Whether Obama wins or loses in the fall, this network is going to be a game-changer. So I'm planning to spend more time digging in and writing about its internal dynamics, culture and leaders.