This morning, the Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace are announcing "MyDebates.org,," a "landmark partnership" that they claim "will do for the debates what TV did in 1960 for the Nixon Kennedy election." Their joint press release says this new site "will offer a host of interactive tools for viewers to virally engage in the political process." The release notes that "marks the first time that the CPD has paired with an Internet property to include online functionality into the event series and traditional debate format." Unfortunately, the CPD's landmark is little more than a shack. At best.

I'll be going live to the web from time-to-time during the next two-and-a-half days as Twitter (my handle is @mlsif), and every time I'm actually streaming live, Qik--the fabulous live video streaming service we're using--will send a tweet letting you know.

Is it possible to build a successful web portal and community hub around issues and activism? So far, no one has succeeded in this quest, though there a lot of people trying and one could argue that sites as diverse as DailyKos.com, Townhall.com, and Idealist.org each play this kind of role for tens of thousands of reader/members, and projects like the Facebook Causes platform built by Project Agape, Razoo, Changing the Present, Donors Choose and Kiva.org each have somewhat similar aspirations.

One of the longer-distance runners in this search for the holy grail of social change organizing online is Ben Rattray of Change.org, who Josh Levy and I wrote up back in December 2007. Back then, Change.org was going through its first major re-design, shifting from focusing on individual users looking to connect with specific causes, to a platform for organizations looking for a ready-to-use social network toolset tuned to their members. The elevator pitch Rattray used with us was that Change was "Ning for non-profits," and he thought the new approach would not only meld well with the site's 50,000 members but would also, through subscription revenue, help float Change.org's boat.

Well, now Rattray is on to a new vision and strategy to expand Change.org's reach, and as close readers of this site already know, he lured Josh away with promises of untold riches and seventy virgins to help him build it out. (No, we are not bitter.) Earlier this week I had a chance to chat with both of them about this new approach, and here are my notes on the conversation.

It's late and it's Yom Kippur, so I'm going to be brief: Go read all of Zack Exley's detailed field report on "The New Organizers, Part 1: Obama's neighborhood teams and the power of inclusion and respect." Exley, one of the country's consummate NEW political organizers, who started out as a labor organizer and then got in early on internet-powered organizing first with his satirical GWBush.com, followed by stints with MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign and the Kerry campaigns, has written a powerful and convincing depiction of the people-powered, hyper-networked engine purring away under Obama's hood.

Did anyone use MySpace's MyDebates page, the "official online companion to the Presidential Debates"? Alas, not too many. And it looks like only four questions of the millions submitted online were asked by Tom Brokaw, the event's moderator. That, plus the pre-agreed rules that prevented the studio audience from asking follow-up questions or even showing emotion, made the "townhall" style presidential debate more like a wax museum animatronic replica of a townhall. What a shame.

Are we going down the tubes, or can we use the tubes to save us from ourselves? When I'm not distracted by the latest news, that's what I'm trying to think about these days. Here are some unfinished thoughts on the topic...

Monday afternoon, I happened to turn the TV on just as the House of Representatives was voting on the $700 billion Bush-Paulson-Pelosi bailout bill. Watching the split-screen coverage of traders on the floor of the U.S. Stock Exchange as they stared, transfixed, waiting to see if the public, through its representatives in Washington, was going to save their skins, was exhilarating. And then, when the bill went down to defeat, and the market went back to plunging, I was thrilled.

Here's why: I'm tired of living in a de facto plutocracy. I also believe we are on the verge of a revolution in participation in government, powered by new technology that is making it possible for many more of us to connect together and have a meaningful voice in the process. The bailout bill, and the process by which it is being jammed through Congress, is an affront to those democratic values. We can do better. And the vote Monday showed, in nascent form, how the same forces that are eating away at the underpinnings of "broadcast politics," the capital-intensive way of electing a President whose demise we've been chronicling here at techPresident, are also starting to unsettle "business as usual" on Capitol Hill.

Joi Ito's Hecklebot is going global tonight. That is, assuming Twitter doesn't crash. And if Twitter holds up under the traffic of most of its estimated three million users all chattering at once, we're all going to be participating in the birth of something new. You can call it the Global Brain or the Hive Mind, but the Machine that is Us/Using Us (to use Michael Wesch's brilliant phrase) is going up a level tonight, and media and democracy in America will never be the same.

Ever wanted to be able to show someone exactly how a "meme" moves across the web in real-time? Anthony Hamelle of Linkfluence has posted a video doing exactly that. He zeroes in on two political videos that made a big splash at the height of summer: the McCain campaign's successful viral attack on Barack Obama as a "Celeb," which compared him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in the wake of his European tour and scored well over a million views; and Paris Hilton's snarky response, which ultimately overtook McCain with something over three million views.

If the world could vote in the U.S. election, who would win? The Economist magazine has come up with an intriguing way for its readers worldwide to join in, by creating a "Global Electoral College" that assigns votes to each country based on its population size. As of now, more than 11,000 people have voted and as you can see from the graphic below, Obama is crushing McCain, which is somewhat surprising given the somewhat conservative bent of Economist readers, who are quite upscale.