The Web on the Candidates

Blogpac, a group comprised of MyDDers Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, and Mike Stark that gives grants to online progressive activists, has awarded $1000 to former John Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte "for her courage in the face of an irresponsible media." Earlier this year, a mini-scandal erupted after conservatives criticized comments Marcotte had written on her Pandagon blog before she was hired by the Edwards campaign. In the post announcing the award, Mike Stark gives us Marcotte's story, from the time she was hired by the campaign (she was working as a financial aid counselor at UT-Austin) to how the cable news sites helped blow the thing out of proportion to how and why she resigned from the campaign.

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post explains that the Democrats are beating the GOP online, getting more traffic, raising more money, and gaining more popularity on the "social-networking triumvirate" of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. TechPresident's Mike Turk says that it goes beyond using the right technologies. "They've all got Web sites. Yes, they're doing videos. Yes, some are blogging. But that's not enough to really connect with voters." And while Republicans are fighting back, with TechPresident's David All forming TechRepublican and former Reagan campaign aide Charlie Gerow starting QubeTV to counter what he calls the "liberal bias" of YouTube, All says "for the most part Republicans are stuck in Internet circa 2000."

The Web on the Candidates

A new site called QubeTV sees itself as a conservative alternative to YouTube. “It won’t be easy to compete against a giant like YouTube, but if enough conservatives embrace the idea, it could become the go-to place for conservative video on the Web,” said Robert Bluey, director of the Center for Media & Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. The site was started by two former aides to Ronald Reagan, Charlie Gerow and Jeff Lord. “Conservatives now have the opportunity to be in ‘Web 2.0’. Our goal is to make QubeTV the dominant social network site for anyone who is right-of-center and to have the best in online video, especially online video related to the campaign of 2008,” Gerow said. Check out Wonkette's snarky take on the site.

Two surveys have been released that show an increased reliance on the web for information related to the 2008 election. A Word of Mouth Marketing poll found that "Forty-two percent of Americans say they will get more pre-election information from the internet in 2008 than they did in 2004," and online ad network Burst Media found that one quarter of likely voters think the web is the best place to research the candidates, making it the most popular source of information for 2008. The Burst study also found that more than 20% of likely voters had visited a candidate's web site, and almost half would watch online video of a candidate.