While network TV has cut back its coverage of the national political conventions to an hour a night, and within that hour we often get more of the network "stars" bloviating than straightforward speechifying from the convention floor, the internet is, as my colleague Andrew Rasiej likes to say, "the Tivo of our times." A glance back at the speeches and media moments in Denver and their YouTube views suggests a couple of episodes must have strong word-of-mouth, since people are going to watch the stuff they heard about but missed.

More reporting from the front lines of academic research on politics and the internet: Now I'm sitting in on a panel with presentations on the connections between the Dean campaign and the New Left (no, he didn't slum with the Weathermen); John Kerry's innovative (!) use of the web post-2004; and Italian firebrand and antipolitician extraordinaire, Beppe Grillo.

More on whether online activism can be turned into offline votes from the Wharton School; Ari Melber analyzes Barack Obama's impressive use of social networking and text messaging to target and organize young voters; a new Pew study shows that young people are getting much of their news from social networking sites; Jeff Jarvis charts the arc of the "change" meme; an anti-Huckabee video makes the leap from the web to TV; Kos urges his readers to vote for Romney in Michigan; Obama scores endorsements from Kerry, Miller, and Lamont; and Matt Stoller hopes Lamont can help turn Obama to his side.

I’m in Chicago for the second annual YearlyKos convention and since yesterday afternoon I’ve keep coming back to the same conclusion: I think, nearly three-and-a-half years after Dean for America collapsed in the wake of the Iowa caucus loss, that Howard Dean might have won the campaign.

Earlier this morning (and aired on C-SPAN2), Newt Gingrich and Sen. John Kerry held a "debate on Global Climate Change, specifically carbons in the atmosphere," in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

John and Newt debated two views for an American solution to help reduce carbons emissions. The debate wasn't moderated; but was rather an open dialogue-style debate of back and forth question and response.

The Web on the Candidates

MyDD's Jonathan Singer interviewed John Kerry on his book tour and Kerry unexpectedly mentioned that John McCain had approached him in 2004 about joining the ticket as Vice President.  While Kerry declined to discuss this more, when pushed by Singer to confirm the remark, he replied, "Absolutely correct."  Needless to say, Singer doesn't think the allegation bodes well for McCain.  "This story could hardly come at a worse time for McCain, whose campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is already noticeably foundering," he writes.

Michael McElroy at the Caucus wraps up the blogosphere's treatment of John McCain in light of his recent trip to Iraq, his disappointing fundraising numbers, and his alleged overture to John Kerry about being Vice President in 2004.  Kevin Drum said about McCain's trip to Iraq, "Note to conservatives... do you really think you can get away with pretending that the whole trip went smoothly and the press is merely being unfair in its reporting?" ( McCain has been criticized for painting a rosy picture of Iraq after his visit there).  Michelle Malkin, however, said that "while I'm no fan of his, what he has been saying the past week is the reality we saw when we were in Baghdad in January. It ain’t a stroll in the park. It’s a war zone, for heaven’s sake. But it ain’t all Armageddon either.”  More at the Caucus.        

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.