Daily Digest: Bring Your Spam to the "Astroturf" Picnic

New vs. Traditional media is apples and oranges, Cybersecurity advice for the next President, DNC responds to "Democrats Praising McCain" ad, McCain offers prizes to spammers and realizes his recent YouTube dominance, and the #dontgo Twitter debate continues...

Daily Digest: Bring Your Spam to the "Astroturf" Picnic

New vs. Traditional media is apples and oranges, Cybersecurity advice for the next President, DNC responds to "Democrats Praising McCain" ad, McCain offers prizes to spammers and realizes his recent YouTube dominance, and the #dontgo Twitter debate continues...

Daily Digest: Romney Lost Because He Relied Too Much on the GOP Echo Chamber

More on young voters in 2008; lost votes in California?; Ben Smith shares the labor and the smarts; Real Clear Politics earns some kudos; Matt Stoller reinvents campaign finance reform; Patrick Leahy wants the Founding Fathers online; what went wrong for Mitt Romney; McCain aide shares some secrets; GOP "money-bomb" bombs; Josh reports from Italy; our favorite videos; and some reality checks to end the week.

Daily Digest: 9/10/07

Matt Stoller looks for ways to organize the netroots against a Hillary Clinton candidacy; a new widget from Rock the Vote makes it easy to create your own voter registration program; James Durban implores conservative groups to back Rock the Vote and steer it away from liberal groups; and Mike Huckabee challenges Fred Thompson to a Lincoln-Douglas debate.

YearlKos Liveblogging: On the Evolution of the Blogosphere

With the top 50 political blogs getting 95% of the traffic, has a Blogosphere Establishment formed? Does the word blogger suffice to describe people who may be practicing journalism, activism or campaigning for a candidate, sometimes all at once, sometimes not? Should top bloggers practice a kind of affirmative action in who they link to or highlight? Six top political bloggers tackle these questions and others...

PDF2007: The Rise of the Netroots

[We're going to post text or excerpts from the proceedings of PdF2007 here as fast as we can get them. (And we're also working to get footage from the mainhall sessions up online too, but that will take til tomorrow.) MyDD blogger Matt Stoller gave a great talk explaining the rise of the netroots, which he abridged slightly because time was tight; we're thrilled to publish the full text below. The editors.]

A few years ago, I had what's called a 'crazy uncle' theory of internet politics. I noticed that the figures who did well online all seemed like a crazy uncle saying things that are true but extremely uncomfortable, that power and authority was built on silly illusions. You know, it's like when you're a kid at Thanksgiving and your uncle starts telling you about how much pot your parents smoked, which you had never really known about. It's uncomfortable but kind of awesome.