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.

The Web on the Candidates

Rudy Giuliani isn't using the web smartly enough, and that's why he has the most to fear from it, writes Jeff Jarvis. Because he hasn't produce any videos of his own, Giuliani could be hurt by a new video from New York firefighters who have been sparring with Giuliani, blaming him for bad radios on 9/11 and their inability to fully recover other firefighters' remains, Jarvis says. "Even before this video, if you went to YouTube and searched for the latest videos on Giuliani you’d find no end of Ron Paul videos (because he’s everywhere) and then no end of videos from 9/11 conspiracy theorists and deniers and Giuliani haters. Fringe though they may be, these people own 'Giuliani' on YouTube. Giuliani doesn’t," Jarvis writes. To counteract this effect, Jarvis says Giuliani should "flood-the-zone" -- an idea first made popular by Joe Trippi -- to ensure that Giuliani's positive outnumber the negative. But first, he needs to stop being so afraid of the web. Jarvis reminds us that "this is the same candidate who still has a private MySpace page! He has no Facebook page. His web site doesn’t even have a blog."

Reacting to Joe Biden's recent comments about the blogosphere ("They don't own the Democratic Party. What are they talking about?"), Mike Lux, a co-founder of the new progressive site Open Left, drafted an open letter to him. "It pains me... to see your disdain and, I think, ignorance, about the millions of people who are active in politics through the internet: the members of groups like MoveOn.org, the writers and readers of blogs, the activists who get information and sign petitions and take digital cameras to political events and organize local events through the internet," Lux wrote. "When the folks in this movement speak of taking back our party, we should be clear: we do want to take it back from the inside-the-Beltway elite punditry, and give more ownership to grassroots activists who are the heart and soul of our party. What exactly is wrong with that?" In Biden's defense, he didn't really come out strongly against the blogosphere, but was referring to one blogger, and in the rest of the interview, he doesn't trash bloggers at all and even makes a reference to attending the YearlyKos conference.