Downplayed in the News

Having attended the inauguration yesterday, here are the stories the news did not cover adequately:

• There were over two million people celebrating in DC yesterday. The conservative estimates of under two million did not count the people past the Washington monument, on the parade route, and still stuck on the subway or elsewhere in DC. The biggest story of the day was that these two million strangers left the National Mall without fights and with minimal pushing. This is a testament to the unifying power of Obama.
• When Bush first came out, "the boo heard around the world" was created on the Mall. The news cut the crowd mics because some people might find it "insulting." The people on the mall found Bush's presence insulting.
• There was more than the one "O bam a" chant heard on TV. I recall at least three very large ones which the two million people on the mall yelled. The media feared this was too reminiscent of Germany in the last century: was it?

Rate the Debates

We had 90 students turn out for our bi-partisan debate watch party tonight. There were several laugh-out-loud moments! I think this election marks a major turning point for the long-running apathy towards politics both by students and the American public in general. It's great to have everyone involved in the discussion!



(FYI: This movie in its entirety is available for free, online, at slackeruprising.com .)

The 2008 MoveOn Plan

In case you missed it, here's what MoveOn plans on doing this fall to get Obama elected. What they neglect to mention is that there are lingering smears against MoveOn that Fox News and related media are continuing to propagate. Thus, MoveOn involvement has the potential to harm the Obama campaign by association in the minds of this much misled electorate. Where's the plan to stop this brainwashing?

What New Hampshire Means to Paul's Campaign

Last night Paul received 8% of the vote in the NH primaries, after last week receiving 10% in Iowa. The two results, despite close numbers, mean different things. In Iowa, it showed that Paul could beat a "front-runner" like Giuliani and was therefore a formidable competitor. In New Hampshire, the results show that Paul is right alongside "front-runners" Huckabee and Giuliani (who both received more votes than Paul, but all three stayed within 3% of each other). McCain, the winner in NH, only received 3% more votes than Paul in Iowa.

What does all this mean? The Republican party is fractured. A number like 10% sounds low, but when the overall winner is lucky to reach 35%, 10% is actually really high. The Iowa and New Hampshire results show that Paul has a real chance in this election, but he needs to pick up some key states to get his delegate numbers up.

If the geeks decided

TechCrunch is running an online primary based on candidates' high technology views. The current standings reinforce my previous post on the 2008 Presidential Race, with the addition of Kucinich as the front-runner on the Democratic side. Too bad this could never be.

Calling it early: The Four Person Race to the White House

With the 2008 Presidential Election less than a year away, it's easy to see who the clear forerunners are when you ignore the mainstream media spin machine (and yes, today a good number of voting age Americans actually do). The race has come down to four candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Ron Paul. Why am I ignoring the other Republican candidates? Because the Republicans don't have a snowballs chance in hell in 2008 if they don't field Ron Paul. He's their only chance to get Democrats to vote Republican, and if they can't see that they will lose. For example, today in Virginia Paul's campaign turned in 20,000 signatures to get him on the state's GOP primary ballot. The 20,000 signatures are 5,000 more than Mitt Romney turned in, and double the 10,000 signatures required for a place on the ballot. Paul clearly has grassroots support that the other candidates (even Democrats) are having trouble obtaining.

Let's examine the "If Clicks Were Votes" series released by Compete for November 2007.

By the Numbers
Ron Paul: 496,906 unique website visitors
Barack Obama: 318,179 unique website visitors
Hillary Clinton: 289,615 unique website visitors
John Edwards: 136,002 unique website visitors

State-by-State








Yes, this is a new concept to rank candidates based on their online popularity. But you must remember that online popularity does translate back into real-world popularity, and that translates into votes in America's idea of a democracy. If each one of those unique visitors to a candidate website mentions the candidate to even 5 of his or her real-world friends, you can see the "reach" numbers jumping into the millions. It will be interesting to see how close the primary results maps look to these website visitor maps.