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.        

Today, I got a friend request on Facebook from Howard Dean, and I decided to break my own rule on accepting such requests from politicians, because I wonder how he's going to use Facebook...and if he'll now respond to my email to him.

So, this afternoon I got an email reading, "Howard Dean sent you a message on Facebook." (This is after I decided to accept his friend invitation yesterday.) Well, it wasn't really from Dean. What I did get was an email from the person who is paid to "be" Howard Dean on Facebook, or rather, one of the staffers behind his profile, Stephanie Taylor, the managing editor of Democrats.org. I wish I could say I was disappointed to not hear directly from the Governor, but this is what I expected. Let's parse what she wrote...

The bigfoots of the press were all in Chicago this past weekend for YearlyKos, and they churned out lots of coverage. So did the littlefoots of the web. Plus, Ron Paul beats Barack Obama on YouTube!

Howard Dean on "the most extraordinary invention for empowering ordinary people since the invention of the printing press: ....speaking for myself, even after the campaign four years ago, I didn't realize what a powerful tool this is.....It has re-democratized America. There is an enormous shift in power." More after the jump...

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Newt Gingrich is advising Fred Thompson to use video when, or if, he announces; asking if the Internet really matters in election politics; Barack Obama launches Generation Obama; and Obama, Sam Brownback, and Ron Paul are the only candidates to support an act that would create "a kind of Google for the federal government";

Glenn Greenwald gives respect to Ron Paul and considers a comparison with Howard Dean; Danny Glover makes another comparison, this time to Ross Perot, warning that Paul may started getting similarly hounded in the press; Fred Thompson suggests that he won't be president after all; blogger Craig Stoltz gets excited over the New York Times' Debate Analyzer; a new section of Fred Thompson's website seems strangely underdone; and Mitt Romney ads are showing up on Gay.com. Way!

More on whether online activism can be turned into offline votes fro the Wharton Schooll; 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 at the Politics Web 2.0 conference at the University of London, Royal Hollaway, and things have just kicked off. As always with my visits to conferences, I will try to blog that which I find interesting (I'm no Ethan Zuckerman) and all my renderings are not verbatim, but rough paraphrasing. Here are my notes on one of the first keynotes, which definitely held my attention. Helen Margetts, of the Oxford Internet Institute, is presenting on "Digital-era Governance: Peer production, Co-creation and the Future of Government." This is one area where the possible impact of the internet has been underestimated, especially within the community, she starts off. These technologies could have a huge meaning for government.