Obama's message to wealthy donors nets a new casualty; a study says most Americans aren't watching online political videos; a nasty, dirty Second Life build; John McCain reaches out to non-conservatives on blogger conference calls; and is McCain's climate change strategy appealing to Democrats?

Jeff Jarvis rounds up the many, many ways to chop, splice, and parse online data about the elections; General JC Christian produces a Second Life parody site devoted to Mike Huckabee; Al Qaeda asks its members to submit questions to its #2 leader; what Star Wars characters do the candidates remind you of?; Ron Paul launches an effort to recruit precinct captains; and RNC online operations guy Cyrus Krohn gets a nice puff piece.

Ron Paul raises $4.3 million online, breaks records, and a collective "wha?" is heard across the land; a Congressman bans all incoming links from Blogspot domains and gets predictably ridiculed; Stephen Colbert drops out of the race: "It's time for this nation to heal," he says; the state of politics in Second Life; and why are all of the online campaign directors so darn young?

OffTheBus launches a new wiki tracking presidential campaign staffers; looking at potential FEC violations in candidates' Second Life presences; listing the top-ten anti-Hillary sites, which are collectively raising a ton of cash to stop her; and Ron Paul reports a haul of $5 million this quarter, raising eyebrows and comparisons to Howard Dean.

A new video investigates Rudy Giuliani's "scheduling conflicts" on the day of an African American-themed debate; a video shows that Mitt Romney has invested a tidy sum of money in Iran, despite very public calls for others to divest from the country; some missing John Edwards videos turn up on YouTube; a new social networking site aims at online liberals; Ron Paul raises over $1 million in an end-of-quarter fundraising push; and Newt Gingrich will not be running for president in 2008.

The way things stand today, doing politics in Second Life is a lot like having sex in a car. Just when things hit a groove, something falls out of whack. Still, when all is said and done, you're glad you did it.

The Web on the Candidates

More details have emerged about a MySpace-based reality show in development called "Independent." Developed with cooperation from Mark Burnett, whose resume includes "Survivor" and "The Apprentice," the show will capitalize on the ongoing political activity on MySpace by giving users a chance to select a "candidate" -- a regular Jill or Joe, not a current candidate -- who they think will best represent them. The winner will receive $1 million, which they can give to a candidate or a PAC or use to fund their own real run for president. Jeff Berman, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for MySpace, sees the show trying to replicate a mythical America that ensures equality for all. "One of the most amazing things about MySpace is it's a completely neutral platform. No matter how rich you are, where you come from, or what you believe in, if you have a compelling message and you deliver it well, you have a chance to find an audience. We think it's a great thing for the political process and a great thing for America," he says.

The Candidates on the Web

Two weeks ago we wrote about a new project from California Rep. George Miller called "Ask George," which will allow voters to ask Miller questions about the Iraq war using just about every technology available; they can post videos, write blog posts, participate in Facebook groups, send a text message, use Twitter, or even write an email to Miller, being sure to tag or label the questions with "Ask George." All of the submitted questions will be aggregated at Community Counts, the site run by David Colarusso that also aggregates YouTube Spotlight videos and submissions for the upcoming YouTube/CNN debate. As we've written before, this is an innovative idea, and one of the first by a national politician to truly leverage the underlying architecture of the web. Miller's team is still putting the finishing touches on the project, but check out Miller's first video response to submitted questions; it's refreshingly honest and direct. We believe this is the first time a U.S. politician has used SMS and Twitter for pull instead of push messaging, meaning that instead of spamming supporters with messages, supporters send messages to the pol. Also, go to the Community Counts page to see what they're up to. Again, this is something the presidential candidates need to be doing. Also: check out Community Counts' Town Hall, where Colarusso et al. ask other politicians to participate in similar "Virtual Townhalls."

For this installment of my series of visits to each candidate's Second Life efforts, I was joined by PDF Associate Editor Josh Levy, also known as Spencer Mukherji. We had the good fortune of running into Astrophysicist McCallister who is the official (but unpaid) Second Life Coordinator for Mike Gravel's presidential campaign.

This is the first campaign we have seen with an officially recognized and at least nominally supported presence in Second Life. Other efforts are entirely volunteer-generated with little or no contact with their respective campaigns. Overall, I was impressed with Gravel's site. It has a professional feeling (not overly showy nor amateurish) and is quite functional as well.

Have you been wondering why no Republicans have Second Life builds yet? While Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all have unofficial builds promoting them and their platforms, the only Republican to enter the SL fray has been Rudy Giuliani, though that was via an anti-Giuliani build called “Disco Rudy’s.”

Now, Ron Paul — he of the bad web site and the growing number of MySpace friends — has become the first Republican to get an unofficial space.

Today's victim: John Edwards. I visited his new location on March 22nd, the day Elizabeth Edwards announced the recurrence of her cancer. There was a photo of her posted near the site entrance with a timely message. Last month, the Edwards group in Second Life moved their headquarters to a quiet beach setting. The previous location on the more active SL mainland was famously vandalized ("griefed") by some losers with excess time and skillz on their hands.

The new Edwards Campaign Central is located at the relatively bucolic and PG-rated Laguna Beach. More description, analysis, and screenshots after the jump...