Not only should Republicans be worrying about how their presidential candidates run the YouTube gauntlet at their September debate in St. Petersburg, Democratic web maven Joe Trippi tells David All that in the general election, they face being completely overwhelmed by the "gigantic community" the Democratic field is generating online.

The Web on the Candidates

As reported by James Kotecki, Wesley Clark has started to produce videos for his website, stopIranWar.com. While Kotecki is upset that Clark isn't mentioning Kotecki's name responding directly to voters, it's an encouraging step and a sign that Clark may be getting closer to announcing his candidacy.

Giuliani's video closet: PrezVid's Peter Hauck has some advice for Rudy: "Buckle Up, It's Gonna Be a Bumpy Ride." After listing the many of Rudy's less-than-conservative merits, Hauck posts two videos -- one a mayoral campaign video from 1989 showing a very family-friendly Rudy, the other a "Welcome to CPAC" video showcasing Rudy's liberal positions on social issues -- that should provide fodder for his conservative critics in weeks and months to come.

I know I'm stretching the boundaries of TechPresident because Clark hasn't declared that he's running for anything, but I'm trying to make some sense of his recently-launched Stop Iran War site. The policy gist is fairly clear -- Clark thinks that the U.S. should use "every diplomatic, political, and economic option at our disposal" to deal with Iran, and from the homepage:

Cannot the world’s most powerful nation deign speak to the resentful and scheming regional power that is Iran? Can we not speak of the interests of others, work to establish a sustained dialogue, and seek to benefit the people of Iran and the region? Could not such a dialogue, properly conducted, begin a process that could, over time, help realign hardened attitudes and polarizing views within the region? And isn’t it easier to undertake such a dialogue now, before more die, and more martyrs are created to feed extremist passions?

Beyond that, the site has a few tools and feeds -- a petition, a handful of blog posts, two radio clips, some media contacts, three news stories on Iran and something named Flikzor by which folks can upload videos to send to Wes. I wish I had more clever to say than this: I'm not sure what the point of this project is yet, other than he's real worked about Iran and this is some sort of outlet for those energies. Though it does seem to be example number two in a new trend of politicians building well-branded web-based mini-campaigns, example one being John Kerry's Set a Deadline.

The Web on the Candidates

TPMCafe features a post from the Nation's Katha Pollitt in which she deviates from netroots orthodoxy by attempting to understand why Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen's presence on the John Edwards campaign was controversial. "The man is running for president, not king of the blogosphere... He wants -- he needs -- the votes of people who have never looked at a blog in their lives, who are deeply religious, culturally staid, and easily offended in about a thousand ways." she writes.

The Candidates on the Web

Possible presidential candidate Wesley Clark has joined forces with VoteVets.org, a Iraq and Afghanistan war vet group, to produce StopIranWar.com, a site that protests President Bush's "saber rattling" toward Iran and asks Americans to sign a petition against military force in Iran.

We're pleased to announce our newest feature: Technorati tracks, a series of dynamic charts that show how often bloggers are mentioning the presidential candidates over the last 30 and 90 days. The charts are broken down by party, and we've also included a third set showing how bloggers are also talking about prominent non-candidates like Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Wesley Clark and Michael Bloomberg.