The Web on the Candidates

• Last night’s Democratic debate is being roundly criticized by most of the liberal blogosphere, with much of the anger directed at ABC news. Josh Marshall called it an “unmitigated travesty,” and his TPMtv produced a video summary called Wall to Wall Ugly. Markos Moulitsas reminded readers that the questions to the candidates at last summer’s YearlyKos were more on point. Conservative-liberal-I-don’t-know-what Andrew Sullivan, an Obama supporter, called it a “huge night for the Republicans” for Hillary Clinton’s success at attacking Barack Obama. His Atlantic colleague Marc Ambinder wrote “there’s no way Obama could fared worse.” MyDD’s Todd Beeton felt dirty, remarking that “I feel like taking a shower after that debate,” though he judged it a draw. And on OpenLeft Natasha Chart wrote that she “felt like George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson had taken truncheons to the skulls of the candidates.” How’s that for war metaphors?

• A new website has popped up with a refreshingly simple idea: invite Barack Obama supporters to post about why they’re supporting him. It’s only text, and there aren’t that many entries so far, but it’s not a bad idea. It would be made better by the addition of videos, images, audio, and anything else you can throw up on the tubes; look to Hillary Speaks For Me for inspiration. (thx, Alex Kellner)

• More evidence the Brits are ahead: London Mayoral candidate Brian Paddick will be holding a live webcast chat, using Ustream.tv, with voters tomorrow night. He has some smart strategists working for his campaign. Jerome Armstrong, the head honcho behind MyDD, is advising Paddick on new media strategy. TechPresident’s Micah Sifry and Mike Turk are in London for the Politics 2.0 conference, and just might be observing the event…

• After leaving the National Journal’s Technology Daily, Danny Glover went on to produce the video sharing site Eyeblast.tv. A recent entry on the site takes a look back at all of the voter-generated video we’ve seen over the last year, from Obama girl to the McCain Girls to more obscure videos in support of… Duncan Hunter. Remember him?

• Social bookmarking site Mister Wong has an unlikely guest this week in dorm-room-turned-Politico videblogger James Kotecki. Kotecki purports to have taken a serious turn, vowing in a new video from a couple of weeks ago to “bring the facts and analysis with a minimum level of creativity.”

• We’ve heard the ol’ “Obama is Apple, Hillary is Microsoft” bit before, and now data miner Matthew Hurst writes that Obama is Google — “the candidate we love to love,” and Clinton is, yes, Microsoft, “the candidate that we love to hate.” I’m not one for such simple comparisons, but they sometimes capture an element of truth. What do you think?

• LIVE Interview Online, the site that creates real-time interviews for other websites, will be hosting a live interview with Allison Fine, co-editor of our Rebooting America book project, on April 24 at 2pm ET. If you can, be sure to show up. Also, you have until May 1st to submit your own essay for the project, and to read and vote on others’ submissions.

The Candidates on the Web

• Businessweek’s Stephen Baker checked out Hillary Clinton’s Twitter feed and discovered that she’s following exactly zero people. By comparison, Barack Obama is following more than 23,000 people (it looks like his campaign follows people that follow him). A quick look at Quotably, a site that tracks conversations on Twitter, shows much more robust participation for Obama than for Clinton. We agree with Baker that Hillary “probably should pretend she’s listening to all those people, even though neither has the time for it,” but it looks like she’s just using it as another broadcast tool.

In Case You Missed It…

Mike Turk and Micah Sifry are at the Politics Web 2.0 conference in London and are doing some hard livebloggin’. Check out their dispatches here and here.

With the important Pennsylvania primary around the corner, Obama for America is placing new issue-based ads targeted to news sites in the state, reports Kate Kaye. Purely focused on persuasion, the ads mark a first for the Obama campaign when it comes to Web advertising, and stand in stark contrast to fundraising ads placed by the Clinton campaign.

Morra Aarons announces that, in a further extension of BlogHer’s mission to identify and promote women in the blogosphere, they’re producing a new widget and inviting women political bloggers to list themselves. There’s even a great iPhone version so you can find bloggers while you’re on the road, say, in Pennsylvania.

A blogger calling himself the “Boss,” who lives somewhere on E Street, has written that he’s endorsing Barack Obama for president.