The Web on the Candidates

• Last week Barack Obama finally showed up on Fox, allowing himself to be interviewed by Chris Wallace after two years saying he would do so. Despite promises from an Obama aide that he would “take on” the network, the candidate had a friendly interview with Wallace. So the lefty-sphere, which has had it out for Fox for years, is feeling betrayed. “So let’s see … a right-wing media outlet taunts you for a few months, and the way to show strength is to cave in to those taunts? Kind of an odd approach,” begins Markos Moulitsas’ reproach, in which he chides Obama for looking weak in front of the conservatives. “It was a mistake for Obama to go on FOX’s Sunday show and treat the experience as if it was a real news interview,” wrote MoveOn’s Adam Green. But HuffPost blogger Stephen Burt had a different reaction; he saw “the Obama we have seen all along, who wants to use words to unify the country and bring uncommitted citizens to our side.” But who cares about that; bring on Jeremiah Wright! (thx, Ben Smith)

• Every time he tries to get out, Jeremiah Wright keeps pulling him back in. Obama’s mentor, pastor, father-figure, or whatever has been making the rounds as if he were veritable candidate himself, first stopping by for a chat with Bill Moyers and then moving on to a raucous speech at the National Press Club. Wright has firmly inserted himself into the presidential race, despite his claims to be unconcerned with politics, and the pastor is like manna from heaven to left- and right-wing blogs and the mainstream media, all of whom are trying to keep the dog-and-pony-show moving along. Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan, who has been pushing to move past the Wright stuff, is now pressing Obama to face up to it once and for all; Marc Ambinder writes that “Wright is not content for the world to see him as a surrogate for Barack Obama, whom he regularly and repeatedly minimizes as a ‘politician’” and is instead concerned with advancing his own agenda; Michelle Malkin points out that Wright’s security is provided by the Nation of Islam; and Ann Althouse says that “Obama is letting Wright overpower him.” Meanwhile, check out Salon for a thoughtful discussion of what Obama should do about all this. Meanwhile, our own Micah Sifry sees Wright’s overplayed comments as a victory of soundbite politics over soundblast politics.

• Two college students that just happen to be Democratic superdelegates don’t know who to cast their vote for in August, so they're turning to you — YouTube nation — for help. Maybe you could help them study for their finals too.

• Micah is in L.A. for a one-day conference on the Economics of Social Media, and his talk netted a nice roundup from CNet’s Stefanie Olsen. “Voter-generated content is the wild card of 2008. The bottom line is that the campaigns have lost control,” Micah told the rapt audience, no doubt hypnotized by the beauty of our graphs and charts.

The Candidates on the Web

• PajamasMedia’s Roger L. Simon has an interesting take on the blogger conference calls John McCain’s campaign has been leading since last year. McCain is unusually direct with these bloggers, and Simon was impressed not only with his willingness to answer questions, but also his ease with this particular group. “What most impressed me though is that McCain seems to genuinely enjoy talking to bloggers—and not entirely because we may be ‘in the tank’ for him,” Simon writes. Now it’s time for McCain that straight talk express truly online. Vlogging, anyone?

• Apparently lacking a platform of his own, Mississippi Republican congressional candidate Greg Davis released an attack ad on opponent Travis Childers for being endorsed by Barack Obama, whose pastor was Jeremiah Wright, who said bad things about America… This is apparently becoming a strategy of state GOP parties, but will it work?

• Barack Obama’s mobile campaign has been central to its organizing strategy (though we don’t know how central because they won’t tell us). It’s impressed the mobile industry too, and it’s on the shortlist for the Mobile Messaging Industry Awards, competing with projects like mBlox Financial Services, Save the Children mobile messaging campaign, and something called mDubai-SALIK Toll Alerts.

In Case You Missed It…

Today, one of the Republican Party’s fastest rising stars, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, joined New Orleans Democratic Mayor Ray Nagin to announce that they are working with YouTube and Google to “bring American voices into a forum with Presidential nominees,” reports David All.

Micah Sifry is back from the future, having gone there at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Loic le Meur of the start-up Seesmic. Both of them are tech pioneers who are working in the emerging world of the world live web. And when they say live, they don’t mean simply the part of the web that gets updated often, otherwise known as the blogosphere and the news-sphere. They mean the direct streaming of live events onto the web, along with live feedback from audiences that are highly networked.

Will soundbite politics win out over soundblast politics? That’s was on Micah Sifry’s mind Monday as he watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright speaking live on CNN at the NAACP Detroit convention.

In our never-ending quest to cover how technology is changing politics and serve the growing community of activists, technologists, journalists, politicians, government workers, bloggers and plain old citizens who are engaged in making this change happen, we are pleased to announce two new additions to our editorial crew. Dave Witzel and Allison Fine are coming on board Personal Democracy Forum as senior editors who will help expand our coverage on PersonalDemocracy.com of how mass, networked participation in the public arena is affecting all the important arenas outside of electoral campaigns (which we cover obsessively at techPresident).