The site quotes NGP chairman Nathaniel Pearlman saying:

Robin never robbed an honest tradesman. My identification with Robin Hood fit.

Hence the name (although one also must wonder if the site is also inspired by my former NMS colleague Not Larry Sabato, or my former Blog P.I. co-blogger Not Paul Begala). The website lists GOP Campaigns Receiving Money From Users of NGP’s Software and goes on to note:

NGP Software is being sued in U.S. District Court (Aristotle v. NGP, D.C. CA 05-1700) for allegedly making false and deceptive advertising claims about its exclusive devotion to “Democrats and their allies”, and trading on that supposed purity for commercial gain.

Who is Aristotle? It’s NGP’s chief competitor, but which provides its services to politicians of both major parties. One can easily imagine that NGP’s claim to being Democratic-only is a competitive advantage when trying to win the business of Democratic clients, although I have not looked closely at the dispute and make no judgment as to Aristotle’s claims.

But this got me wondering. Who exactly is behind NotRobinHood.com? So I plugged the domain into WHOIS and found this:

Registrant:
Aristotle International
205 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington, District of Columbia 20003
United States

Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense.

The conventional wisdom right now seems to be that that this is going to hurt Democrats and help Republicans. McCain now has time to win over disaffected conservatives, raise money for the general election and hone his positive message. Meanwhile, the Democrats may not know who their nominee is for sure until a month hence, and whomever emerges victorious will not only have these disadvantages against McCain but may also have to deal with more-serious-than-usual intra-party divisions. That is, a long hard slog between Cinton and Obama could leave the losing faction demoralized and slow to rejoin the fray.

I’m not sure this is correct, at least not overall. Sure, McCain will be better prepared and the Democrat will have to mend fences late. But we’re only talking about the campaigns and party apparatii. This is the age of the 527. And it cannot go without noting that this is true in no small part to McCain’s own campaign finance legislation which, by limiting soft money to the parties, weakened those institutions and, by leaving open a “loophole,” allowed issue-advocacy 527s to replace them.

Certainly, a pro-McCain 527 could launch anytime now, and I assume at least one will. But 527s are less effective at building up than tearing down. Whereas a party must build a governing coalition to succeed, 527s are often driven by a narrow faction or collection of issues. Because coordinating between a campaign and 527 is illegel, they can’t share strategy or resources, and likely won’t know the others’ targets. It’s almost designed to waste resources.

But a negatively-focused 527 doesn’t necessarily need to know whether Obama will be nominated in order to start hitting McCain. So far, we’ve been told that McCain will keep the U.S. in Iraq for 100 years, will start more wars in the meantime, and that he is very old. We will undoubtedly hear more soon. And once the key themes are worked out online, we’ll start seeing them on television.

Meanwhile, Republican 527s can’t be sure that targeting one candidate or the other won’t be money or resources wasted. The RNC just rolled out an Obama Spend-o-Meter, which does in fact play to a McCain strength, especially as the GOP itself has lost credibility on the matter. On the other hand, talking about big-spending Democrats is a pat response. It could just as easily have been the Clinton Spend-o-Meter.

Unfortunatley for McCain and the GOP, a candidate-specific strategy will just have to wait.

Indeed, they are no longer the Jail Blazers, although that rep did carry the upside of seeing more Blazer jerseys than Wizards jerseys in the District.

Meanwhile, Blazermania has gripped the Portland metropolitan area like it hasn’t in nearly a decade. For the first time since anyone can remember, home games are actually selling out. The team has encouraged this by offering package deals for tickets like the four-tickets-for-$88 that put me in a seat at Paul Allen’s allegedly-bankrupt Rose Garden this December for the first time since the 2000 Western Conference Finals (from which I may never fully recover).

And it’s not just special ticket packages — the Blazers are making concerted pitches meant to appeal to Blazer fans’ better basketball selves. Here’s one that’s currently on the official Blazers website, that I thought was worthy of noting here:

Now, tell me that doesn’t sound like a last-minute campaign fundraising appeal. In fact, all they need now is a fundraising bat.

If Romney loses Iowa after having spent $1.8 billion there and then loses in his backyard in New Hampshire he’ll be in bad, bad shape. The horrid press over the following few weeks would likely kill him.

(ed.note: I had meant the reference to Mitt’s $1.8 billion in spending in Iowa to be an obvious bit of sarcasm at Romney’s expense. But it seems Romney’s efforts to buy the Republican nomination have become so notorious and proverbial that many readers are asking if it’s really true. So, no, I believe his spending is well below $1.8 billion. But he wants it really bad and there’s still a day left. So who knows.)

$1.8 billion sounds plausible? Using what counting system?

Elsewhere on the web today, a Des Moines-based WFAA reporter says Romney has spent $4 million on TV ads; also today, Fred Thompson [disclosure] aide Rich Galen writes in a column for CNS news,

according to the Professional Guessing Class, [Romney] may have spent upwards of $8 MILLION here

If Romney has in fact spent $8 million, which doesn’t sound like a bad guess, then he would have to spend 225 times that in order to spend $1.8 billion. CNN says all the candidates combined have spent $40 million on TV ads; I’d be surprised if there was a billion dollars worth of TV time to be had in Iowa in an entire year.

If Romney really dropped that much money in the state, Iowa could practically retire, and hey, maybe accede to another state or system its coveted first-in-the-nation status. Which would probably be a good thing for everyone. Except, of course, Iowa.

P.S. For example, see this from First Read:

MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — A woman who famously switched from volunteering for Clinton to Obama has changed her mind… again. …

“Probably I’ll caucus for Richardson,” she said after Edwards spoke. “My guess is he won’t be viable, and then I’ll probably scoot right over to Edwards.”

Are Iowans really so serious about their vote? Or are they spoiled and self-indulgent? In another state, I’ll bet voters would not feel so entitled, political observers would not ascribe such mythical status to their choices, and just maybe, subsequent states would have a bigger say in the primary process.

Alas, as my former Hotline colleague Reid Wilson explains, attempts at reform might be about as easy to properly implement as the Fair Tax.

P.S. After some consideration, I actually wish I had called this “Josh Marshall’s Readers Are… Not So Good With Numbers.”

It is certainly disturbing that Obama is attacking a leading progressive voice in a media system where progressive opinion journalists are few are far between. What is even more disturbing is that this is not the first time the Obama campaign has considered doing this. Back during the Donnie McClurkin fiasco, it has been confirmed to me from multiple sources that the Obama campaign was preparing opposition research papers of this sort against some one of the progressive bloggers who were speaking ill of him at the time …

This is a campaign that appears willing to go negative against a wide range of progressive media figures should those figures step out of line and criticize Obama campaign decisions. Given that, I became personally worried that an Obama nomination would, at some point in the future, result in a public smear campaign, possibly directed by the a new White House communications department, against me and / or many of my friends and colleagues.

Bowers no doubt reserves the right to criticize President Obama, but apparently believes he and his ideological allies are above reproach. Look, the instinct to react negatively to criticism is not unsurprising or even wrong. But Obama is merely asserting himself against a critic who had praised him before. That’s not unsurprising or wrong, either. But rather than address the specifics, Bowers’ response amounts to “Do you know who I am?” Or more accurately: “Do you know who he is?”

Ezra Klein at least acknowledges there is substance to the debate:

It’s not only the actual attacks that are weak (most of them rely on misinterpreting one comment, then misinterpreting the next, then pretending there’s a contradiction)…

yet he can’t escape progressive identity politics, either:

…but, seriously, it’s Paul Krugman.

And in any case, that isn’t Bowers’ problem. Trust me, conservative bloggers are ignored by Republicans more than progressives think they are by Democrats. Bowers just perceives any slight from those more powerful as unfair marginalization — when in fact it is actually the opposite.

It’s difficult to imagine conservative bloggers being terribly upset about a Republican campaign rebutting — not even collecting or distributing oppo on — say, David Brooks. Perhaps Paul Krugman simply has a reputation among the left unrivaled by any major commentator on the right, among the right. Or maybe Brooks isn’t the right analogy. Nobody speaks of him as the “most conservative voice in the mainstream media,” only the most conservative voice on the NYT op-ed page. Are the left’s celebrated public figures more important to them than any celebrity on the right? If so, is this because contemporary progressives have fewer established wins than the right, and hence a more grievance-based, underdog mentality? If so, this would explain why an attack on one might be considered an attack on all. So maybe there is no analogy. Among conservative bloggers, no one’s ego is dependent upon Republican campaigns genuflecting to George Will, Charles Krauthammer or Jonah Goldberg.

Is there anyone who would qualify? Probably Glenn Reynolds and Ed Morrissey, maybe Michelle Malkin and perhaps even Hugh Hewitt (although his influence has been sliding badly as of late). But here’s the key thing: This doesn’t hold if the campaign has a point.

If a Republican office-seeker responded unfairly to a salient criticism from a conservative blogger (or even columnist) on an issue that conservatives thought important, then sure. If Malkin criticizes a Republican candidate, only for the candidate to point out that Malkin had praised the same candidate on the same issue before — as is the case with Krugman — then she would take her lumps like anyone else. She’d have some knee-jerk defenders, but no one would write, “seriously, it’s Michelle Malkin.”

After all, Bowers’ other complaints about the Obama campaign are more reasonable. Among them he notes “the poor blogosphere outreach, the willingness to triangulate against left-wing strawmen, and incessant, beltway-pundit friendly talk about the need to ‘fix’ Social Security” are things that would annoy conservative bloggers — not about reforming Social Security, of course, but perhaps advocating amnesty-first, enforcement-maybe immigration reform.

Yet his main grievance is that Obama might push back against critics from the left, including that special class, bloggers. As to that point, a few hours later, TPM’s Greg Sargent checked in with the Obama campaign, which denied collecting oppo research on multiple bloggers:

The Obama campaign put together oppo docs against progressive bloggers hitting the campaign over the mess surrounding antigay folk singer McClurkin? That’s a strong charge — but the Obama camp is denying it. I checked in with a campaign spokesman, who told me: “This is absolutely not true.”

If it turns out that Bowers was correct in that they were researching just one blogger and their denial refers to more than one bloggers, then his complaint would be better justified. Until then, Bowers’ insinuation that liberal bloggers are above the political fray is silly and further evidence that, like all practitioners of identity politics, consider themselves a protected class. They are not. If you attempt to influence political campaigns, you’re in the fray and subject to scrutiny like any other political actor from dark horse challenger to 527 chieftain. Last year, bloggers in Virginia faced up to this fact, when rumors swirled that then Senator-elect Jim Webb had collected information on conservative and liberal bloggers alike. Those charges were denied and never substantiated, but it was plausible and it should have been a wake-up call.

Then again, in an update a few hours later, Bowers revealed that he was, in fact, just overreacting:

This isn’t about kissing blogosphere ass, Joe Anthony, the tone that Obama takes on the campaign, the specifics of the Krugman fight, the use of left-wing strawmen, how to change Republican behavior in Congress, or that Obama doesn’t have a right to disagree with progressives. Or at least, isn’t about the specifics of any of those cases, but instead about the broad and contradictory pattern to which they point. This is about trying to make sense of a strange and contradictory relationship that contains so many good things and so many bad things all at the same time.

It’s not you, it’s me? Well, at least that clears things up! Meanwhile, a clearer-headed, more insightful, more sensible take from Digby:

Perhaps [responding to Krugman is] the smart move. It has long been known by just about everyone who matters that the rank and file activists of the Democratic party are a huge liability. And anyway, where are we going to go? Mike Huckabee? Ron Paul? We have no choice. So, no harm no foul. Running to the right of even Hillary Clinton on health care and social security and using GOP talking points and symbolism is probably all upside. … Obama is a tremendously exciting and talented politician and I would vote for him against any Republican out there without blinking an eye. But as a certified DFH, I really wish he weren’t running this way. Paul Krugman most certainly is not the enemy and neither am I.

Unfortunately, she updated later to agree with Bowers. But at least Digby understands that they’ve been Sister Souljahed. It’ll happen to conservative bloggers, too. And while it might not be easy, they should consider it a sign they’ve arrived.

Online fundraising startups are a longstanding interest of Blog P.I. In our year and a half, we’ve devoted more than a few posts to the subject, including the progressive, Democrat-supporting ActBlue, the conservative, Republican-aligned newcomer ABC PAC/Rightroots, attendant security issues and flawed coverage often (but not exclusively) in the Washington Post. The last time I wrote about it, Rightroots had relaunched, and two similar Republican fundraising startups — Big Red Tent and Slatecard — were announced and on the way shortly.

Now, all three have been up for more than a month, which I think is enough time to make an early comparative assessment.

For those playing at home: Rightroots is a reboot of the ABC PAC/Rightroots slate that saw a trial run fairly late in the 2006 cycle, controlled by McCain adviser Becki Donatelli, former Giuliani Patrick Ruffini and Mike Turk, an outside adviser to the Thompson campaign. Big Red Tent is an outside-the-beltway venture by a pair of Austin, Texas web consultants Ryan Gravatt and Brad Jackson. Slatecard is the brainchild primarily of ubiquitous DC Internet guy David All and web developer Sendhil Panchadsaram (who strangely has no website that I can find).

Last weekend, I signed up for each one and made some nominal contributions. Since then, I’ve continued poking and prodding. I thought about putting together an elaborate chart comparing their features side-by-side. Perhaps in a future post I will, but for now, but I don’t think that gives as clear a picture of what I thought about them. Instead, this post collects my observations, with screen captures. It’s a long one, so I’ve tucked the rest of this post below the fold. Follow me…

I should preface all of this with a caveat: These observations are simply what I found when I visited over the past week. It’s possible there are oversights in my summary, and if there are I will update this post. In true Mystery Shopper style, I didn’t discuss my testing process with any of those involved, so this should not be taken as a fully reported piece. There are probably good explanations for many of the problems I encountered, and if they are given, I will gladly link to them in an update.

Choosing a candidate to receive my small donations was not difficult: I am not only providing outside counsel to the Fred Thompson campaign through my employer, New Media Strategies, but I am also a FDT supporter. Thompson’s consistent federalist philosophy being a large component of my enthusiasm about his candidacy, where I could, I termed my group or slate “The Frederalist Society.”

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on each in turn, followed by a conclusion. As always, YMMV.

RIGHTROOTS

Because Rightroots is the oldest, arguably best-known and first to go live (again) this summer, that’s where I started:

• The website is very simple, and not difficult to navigate. From the main page, one can click through to “Candidates & Races” or perform a search, enter the amount of money you want to donate and proceed to its Amazon.com-style checkout.
• Rightroots includes a link to the candidates’ homepage, which is nice, but that’s about it for any information about the candidates. One pretty much has to know who they are supporting before they get there.
• Using Rightroots, I donated $5 to Friends of Fred Thompson. This went fairly smoothly, up to the point where I had to enter a credit card. The confirmation number on the back of my card has just three digits, while the form demanded exactly four. So I put a zero in front of the digits, and that did the trick. It would have been nice if it would recognize the different security systems for each of the major cards.
• The front page of Rightroots also lists “hot slates” (groupings of candidates) but it doesn’t list figures for how much each have raised. These slates were evidently compiled by Rightroots itself, and so does not answer one of my main criticisms from last year — that it does not allow for users to compile and promote their own slates. I was told this feature would be included next time, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen. Consequently, this was also the one site where I was unable to set up my “Frederalist Society” slate.
• Now, the selections for some of these slates make good sense — “100% No Earmarks” is described on that page as:
  

  Honoring House Republicans with a perfect 100% voting record against pork barrel earmarks in the 110th Congress, as recently scored by the Club for Growth.

  Nice. On the other hand, one slate merely collects all of the Republican presidential contenders — well, except for Alan Keyes; I doubt that bothers you. But I also doubt very many people want to donate to all of the White House candidates.

• There is a “Donate All” button for each slate, but it’s hidden at the bottom, underneath the last candidate’s picture — it is not flush with the other, similarly-designed donation buttons.
• More nitpicks — Rightroots’ poll, promoted on the front page, is out of service. Try voting, and you get this:
  

  An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

  The good news is, the error message goes on to detail instructions for fixing the error. I don’t do code, but if I could get terminal access, even I could probably take care of that. Also, there is no button to view the results without voting.

• Along the same lines, I also got this certificate warning at one point:


• But I really dig the link to the FEC query for Rightroots’ own reports. The others should follow this example.
• I gotta give Rightroots this: It is back. The website languished after the November ‘06 midterms, which I complained about in January, drawing strong objections from some of those involved. I wasn’t sure that it would actually return, but it certainly has done that.
• Unfortunately, the follow-through seems to be half-hearted. Nothing has been added to the News section since August, and it’s been just over a month since anything was added to the blog (there are 5 posts total). It’s not clear to me why there are separate sections for “News” and “Blog.” This reminds me of typical campaign websites, which have had a press release section since the dawn of online politicking, then added blogs separately when they became the norm. Why not put everything in one place?
• RightRoots is simple, but it’s too simple. The site lacks any compelling reason to use it. (Really, not even a widget?) There is nothing that makes the site sticky, or compels you to come back.

BIG RED TENT

Next, the one I know the least about:

• My relative ignorance about Big Red Tent probably has something to do with the fact that its creators are based in Austin while the others are inside the Beltway. On the Internet, physical location is of much less of a consideration, but it still hasn’t received much coverage. It does have the official backing of RedState. But I haven’t seen them write about it since it first went up.
• This site is quite a bit different than the other two, starting with the sea of white compared to the others’ dark backgrounds. I like that. I like the logo, too — it’s the best of the three, I think. Moreover, it also has the best name, communicating its intent to build one large, happy GOP family.
• Otherwise the site is a chore to navigate. Why does Big Red Tent not have a “Sign up here” button on the front page? Why can’t I click on the logo to return to the homepage? Rightroots and Slatecard offer both.
• When you go to sign up and give money, the form asks for your blog URL (sure, why not) as well as my IM screen name (hmm) and cell phone number (really?). There are not required, but it would be nice to know why they were asking. This reminds me of the website Radiohead built to sell their latest album, “In Rainbows.” Am I opting into future text messages? I know people who just elected to grab it off BitTorrent instead. I don’t think that quite works for Big Red Tent.
• The reliance on Drupal means I was assigned a convoluted password, rather than being able to choose my own. Maybe I should write down every single password for every single site where I’ve created accounts, but I don’t. So this bugs me.
• Big Red Tent is not free of bugs, either: I kept getting this when I was logged in:
  

  “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.”

  Hitting “reload” did take care of the issue, but it happened a couple more times thereafter.

• Alone among the three, Big Red Tent has a Twitter account. Great! Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in approaching two months:
  
  

  In that case, it’s fortunate that it isn’t featured on the main page (where it probably should be), where it would signal to all that there isn’t much activity here.

• Big Red Tent offers a widget that I didn’t test, but looks attractive enough to place in my sidebar. However, it seems to be fairly wide, and I doubt it would fit in everyone’s sidebar. (But I certainly approve of the fact that the example widget shows Thompson at the top.)
• Is Big Red Tent trying to do too much? Take for example BRT TV — a promised series of video interviews, hosted by Gravatt and Jackson’s Patriot Group colleague Jill Warren, that has no third video (really second, as the first is an introduction). Again, the lack of follow-through isn’t promising.
• More questions: Why does signup page still ask if I want to be notified when they launch? Seems to me like they’ve already launched. Why can I click into Groups at the top of the page, but not individual Slates? Isn’t “Group” just another word for category from the blog? Where is the blog? The Field Report is helpful, but I could use more of it. I also can’t find the Stump Speeches feature now, so I can’t link to it.
• Stump Speeches, Slates, Groups, Files, Contact lists, Guestbooks, Inboxes... help! I’m utterly lost. The confusing array of features reminds me of the late, unmourned HotSoup and its “issue loops.”
• At least you can create your own slate. As Gravatt explained to Matt Lewis in a Town Hall interview this summer:
  

  We were faced with a decision: Who will the PAC support? We only liked two options. Option 1 is for Brad and I to decide, and Option 2 is to let others decide. We decided Option 2 would be best for a PAC with an online community.

  That’s right on, although it doesn’t seem that there is much of a community so far. That said, at least it offers the possibility, which Rightroots does not.

• I concluded my experiment with Big Red Tent feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. It’s great that there are several functions, but it seems there are several too many. Ultimately, I felt like maybe there was something going on that I just didn’t get.

SLATECARD

And the newest kid on the block:

• Slatecard had both the longest incubation period and was the last to launch. This owes something to principal David All’s penchant for self-promotion, which may bug others (including some at Rightroots) but probably serves Slatecard well.
• At Slatecard, the minimum donation is $10, unlike the others, where I was able to give just $5. Credit card processing fees do take a big bite out of proceeds, so I understand this, and there are probably very few who can afford to give no more than $9.99. On the upside, Slatecard alone lets you check a box to make your donation recurring monthly, if you’d like.
• On the downside, unlike the other websites, my phone number was required. I would kind of like to know why.
• Otherwise I had no problems signing up or making a donation. If there are bugs in the site, I didn’t encounter them. It was the smoothest experience I had at any of the three.
• On the other hand, why isn’t there a search function on the website? The other two do offer this capability.
• The front page of Slatecard shows you who’s “hot” — individual candidates and user-created slates — and includes dollar figures. That’s cool. The non-disclosure from the other sites I believe is a holdover from traditional campaigns, where if you’re not sucking up the dollars (and therefore sucking), you don’t want that public. All puts his cards on the table, and I respect that.
• Speaking of which, All has led an e-mail drive to raise $75,000 overall in the first month since going live. He didn’t quite make it, but it was very close — and within days, the $75,000 goal was met.
• Slatecard offers widgets, of course, and they are the best-designed of the bunch. In fact, if you’re on a Leopardized Mac, All has even explained how you can put one in your Dashboard. (Note: This is a Leopard feature; one could do this with Big Red Tent’s widget as well.)
• True to All’s love of all things social networking, candidate pages link to each candidate’s official pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the like. Each is represented by the socnet’s logo, but you have to mouseover to know that they go anywhere. Slatecard links to candidate official sites as well, but it’s just a clip art image of a house — I got it the second time, but it would make a lot more sense if I could just see the URL as on Rightroots.
• Because Slatecard has the best pages for individual candidates, it paradoxically left me wanting even more. For one thing, the biographical summaries are clearly copied from older versions of each candidate’s Wikipedia page. I can tell because I know Wikipedia style, but it doesn’t identify the source.
• And these pages would be improved if you could add comments. Slatecard gives the impression of offering greater interactivity than the others, when in fact Big Red Tent so far allows for the most feedback.
• Perhaps the most unique aspect of the site is the ability to add “issue badges” to candidates you support. As much as I’d like to sneer, “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges,” I dig this:
  
  

  Naturally, I added the “Federalism” badge to Thompson’s page. It makes sense that you can only add a badge if you have donated to a particular candidate. However, I was only able to add one badge, and the site doesn’t say how many added the same badge as I did. It would also be nice if you could organize by badges and call up a list of all the candidates whom users think they describe. And would it be too difficult to let users create and upload their own?

• This feature also includes idiosyncracies that are all All — one of the issue badges is for “Supports Net Neutrality,” a pet issue of All’s, and something only Mike Huckabee does. As Ruffini has noted separately, it’s essentially a lefty issue. Sure, you can add the “Opposes Net Neutrality” badge… but why is “Support” represented by Pac Man and “Oppose” is represented by Blinky (the red ghost villain)? An annoying editorial tic.



• Perhaps a more serious issue — the badge for “Defeat Radical Islam” puts the Universal No symbol over the Star and Crescent. The war against radical Islam is not, the last time I checked, a war against all Muslims. But that’s what the badge implies.
• Most promisingly, the frequently updated blog announces milestones and upgrades, and has done so consistently since Slatecard launched.

All of these sites are good enough — that is, they do what they advertise. It’s just a baseline, though these websites are still in their infancies (maybe some are toddlers). After tinkering around with each, Slatecard emerges the winner in my book so far. It’s by no means perfect, but it seems more thought-out than its rivals. It offers some unique features that are still fairly intuitive, and it appears to be the most active. While there hasn’t been much activity on either Rightroots or Big Red Tent since their respective launches, I presume both parties imagined the sites would be self-perpetuating and requiring minimal upkeep. At least Rightroots doesn’t promise much more than it delivers; Big Red Tent was more ambitious but almost feels abandoned.

Most of my judgments above are fairly subjective, so I did try to include one objective (if imperfect) metric — how often each site is linked to by third-party websites. Since BlogPulse advertises this capability (unlike IceRocket) I fed the URLs for each into their Trend Tool, selected feedback for the last three months, controlled for possible alternatives (ABCPAC.com and BigRedTent.com both redirect to their respective main sites), and here’s what I found:

Rightroots has had the highest highs, Slatecard is buzzier now, but thanks to an apparent spike in attention last month, Rightroots is hanging in there. I presume that All’s frequent promotion for his project is propping up his numbers a bit. Big Red Tent was in the mix when it launched, but never received as much attention and has since dropped off significantly. (Note: I also fed the names of each site into BlogPulse; the Trend Tool returned more spikes for each, but the pattern was the same.)

Although there are many differences between the sites, they are not so far apart that, given an update or two, Rightroots or Big Red Tent couldn’t usurp Slatecard as the go-to site. But perhaps the most important thing about Slatecard is that, like ActBlue but unlike its Republican counterparts, it has already made the transition to being the primary fundraising mechanism of a political candidate. That’s VA-01 hopeful Kevin O’Neill. So far he’s raised nearly $65,000 — so All should definitely be thanking him for helping reach that $75,000 goal. Of course, candidate support is just what a site like this needs to gain credibility in Republican campaigns, and it’s no secret that brick-and-mortar GOP consultants are warier of using the web than their Democratic counterparts.

I salute each one of these websites, and their creators, for doing what they are doing. I hope they all continue to upgrade, borrow features from each other and compete for online GOP fundraising supremacy. And there’s no reason why there needs to be just one; perhaps they can all find a niche. I hope they do.

Disclosure: As previously noted, I’m with Fred, but that merely influenced the direction of my extraordinarily modest contributions. Otherwise, I do know some of those involved. I consider David All a friend, Patrick Ruffini a friendly acquaintance, and while I have not met Mike Turk in person, we do sometimes work together behind the scenes in the Thompson camp. None of them knew I was writing this post, and I doubt that any of them will be entirely happy with it.

Apart from deriving an equivalence between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that one need not be a member of the leftroots to find inadequate, Halperin dons his finest hairshirt and wails about his years in the wilderness:

For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.

But now I think I was wrong. The “campaigner equals leader” formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.

…

So if we for too long allowed ourselves to be beguiled by “What It Takes” — certainly not the author’s fault — what do those of us who cover politics do now? After all, Mr. Cramer’s style of campaign coverage is alluring in an election season that features so many candidates with heroic biographies and successful careers in and out of politics. (Not to mention two wide-open races.)

Well, we pause, take a deep breath and resist. At least sometimes. In the face of polls and horse-race maneuvering, we can try to keep from getting sucked in by it all. We should examine a candidate’s public record and full life as opposed to his or her campaign performance. But what might appear simple to a voter can, I know, seem hard for a journalist.

It’s not that he’s wrong (although he might be). Rather, it’s that Halperin is not the person to deliver this message. Otherwise, he will have to change his style of reporting, immediately. What are the chances of that? Well, let’s have a look at what The Page looks like today:

That’s what I thought. In fairness, maybe Mr. Halperin hasn’t figured out what comes next. Until he does, “POW!!! BAM!!!! BOP!!!!” it is.

Videotape everything they do

All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.

Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:

Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.

Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:

First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.

Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:

I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.

Perhaps noble, but in a follow-up post, Barnett took the realist position:

Politics ain’t beanbag; I would prefer our candidates and operatives knew as much.

And the good work of building on the idea continued. From the non-aligned John Stoddard:

Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.”

Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.

More good advice from the Larry Sabato of GOP online consultants, David All:

The bottom line is that any serious campaign effort – from City Council to POTUS – should have a two camera strategy — one on the opponent and one on their own guy to help add context to a “macaca” moment and “flood the zone” to deflate organic YouTube search results.

And some unavoidable longer term questions from Bivings Group’s leading voice, Todd Zeigler:

So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments.

It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.

Kos may not much impress ideo-journalistic Washington, but when he talks campaign strategy politico-journalistic Washington listens.

But I do have a small opening to comment because, as the political blogosphere by now knows well, last night Marcotte resigned her position with Edwards ‘08, citing her continued employment as a potential liability for the rest of the campaign.

As my headline asks: What about Matt Gross, Edwards’ Senior Advisor for Online Communications*/Chief Internet Strategist*/general adviser on all things bloggy? Will he resign, too?

Consider John Dickerson’s report in Slate last week, which gave some insight as to how things went down at Edwards HQ:

The senator read some of the offending postings. He asked to talk to the bloggers, whose work he’d not read before and whom he’d never met.

I can certainly believe that Edwards had not read Pandagon (or Shakespeare’s Sister, whence he hired the somewhat less-controversial Melissa McEwan) but I cannot believe that Matt Gross has not. If there was one person on the campaign whose job it was to vet potential blog hires, it was Gross. And it’s not like he just missed a stray posting where Marcotte went a little too far — her quick temper and salty word choices are a big part of what’s made her so popular.

Gross certainly knows this, but from what I can tell, it did not occur to him that her incendiary rhetoric could pose a problem. As a veteran of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, Gross of all people should be familiar with the public relations problem off-message bloggers can present. Even Ezra Klein, one of the co-founders of Pandagon, seemed to second-guess the decision at his own blog last week:

Look: I thought the Edwards’ campaign made a surprising choice when it picked up Amanda. She throws elbows, to say the least. And her focuses, and opinions, are not always popular in contemporary American political life. It seemed an act of bravery and conviction, though I wasn’t sure what, exactly, the upside was. … I don’t envy them the controversy. But they made their own hiring decisions.

Now, Dickerson didn’t mention Gross or his position with the campaign. Actually, I can’t find any blogger from the past week mentioning Gross’ involvement in the fiasco. This surprises me, and I find it curious Edwards put himself out there to settle the issue last week. Had Edwards decided to fire them then and there, I believe then he would have had to issue a personal statement, in order to show the netroots that he personally was not rebuking them. But given their decision, there’s no reason Gross couldn’t have handled that — and kept his boss above the fray.

I don’t know Matt Gross and I wish him no ill will. Until the Marcotte hire, I thought the Edwards online campaign was head and shoulders above any other (so far), and the most savvy since, well, the one he helped run for Howard Dean. All of the technological things that made the Edwards’ online campaign great are just as they were two weeks ago — but in online politics, technology is secondary to community. And that’s where Edwards’ problem lies.

P.S. And now, McEwan has followed suit. I hesitate to make any quick pronouncements, except that I should emphasize I never found her comments as objectionable as Marcotte’s. I agree with Rick Esenberg’s argument that the real issue with Marcotte was

that one cannot help but conclude that she hates – really hates – these people

whereas the general thrust of McEwan’s controversial post struck me as agreeably libertarian (although I can’t defend the use of “Christofascist” (and it wasn’t the only time she used it)).

I don’t think this episode has to do material damage to the Edwards campaign. Who really cares what bloggers do, especially this early in the campaign? On the other hand, bloggers are not inconsequential, and this does say something about the inner workings of the Edwards camp.

In just the past month, a few very large states have started talking about moving their presidential primaries to the first week in February. Those states include Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and the fifth-largest economy in the world, California. This shouldn’t be a surprise: the parties want a bigger say in presidential nominations, and the rest of each state wants a bigger slice of that billion-dollar pie. What’s more, Illinois would like to give favorite son Barack Obama a major boost — and they can’t do it if their primary still comes after Super Tuesday. According to The Green Papers, at least nine other states have taken steps to move their primaries up.

Primary front-loading is a perennial good-government gripe about the nomination process. Coincidentally or not, it continues unabated. And it’s not just the primaries — the presidential debates are starting even earlier this year. The rules are different on the Republican side, but over time, Republicans have generally adopted changes first proposed by the (more process-oriented) Democrats.

This time around the Democratic National Committee, under superlative-magnet chairman Howard Dean, deliberately enabled some noteworthy front-loading: Nevada’s caucus and South Carolina’s primary were both moved up to late January so union members and African-Americans would have a say in the process, whereas they would not in right-to-work Iowa and 97% white New Hampshire. Everybody else can go starting Feb. 5.

Remember that when Howard Dean ascended to party chair in early 2005, the Washington establishment balked. Dean’s support among liberal bloggers might have been a foregone conclusion, but one idea they shared with Dean — a plan to rebuild the party’s national reach by contesting races and spending money all around the country, even in districts previously abandoned to the GOP — helped him win over the state-based committee members who put him over the top.

Needless to say, this has been controversial inside the Beltway, especially after Dean’s slow fundraising start. The party has enjoyed fundraising success under Dean since then, but he’s given so much of it to state parties that the old complaints gave way to new ones.

Of course, the state parties love the arrangement. State party executive directors — they control state party budgets, not the unpaid, figurehead party chairs — queued up to accept their party-building money. For Dean, it was probably a smart move — it may have pre-empted James Carville’s would-be coup before it got very far.

But Dean’s indulgence of the state parties cuts both ways: Yes, he has their support when negotiating with the Beltway establishment. But the nomination process isn’t about that — it’s every state for themselves. And the state executive directors also know Dean won’t be in charge of the party forever: once a nominee is chosen, he or she becomes the de facto leader of the party, and who knows what happens after that. Are the states pressing their advantage now because they know Dean won’t say no to them?

I bet this wouldn’t be happening under Terry McAuliffe. To be sure, McAuliffe was complicit in front-loading the process himself — his big idea was to front-load things just enough to produce a nominee early to take on Bush. In practice, the John Kerry electability meme took hold around the same time and was decisive. (What meme will be temporarily entrenched a year from yesterday?) But his base of power was firmly inside the Beltway — the Clintons and their donors — and not in the states.

The DNC chair can invalidate a state’s primary, or withhold funds, or threaten to do these things. Certainly in public, Dean has said nothing of the sort, even though New Hampshire secretary of state William Gardner is ready to hopscotch Nevada and Florida is openly talking about moving its primary to Jan. 29 — a week ahead of the agreed-upon window.

When it comes to the nomination schedule, how far can the state parties go? What, if anything, can Dean do about it?

Let’s imagine that the big four states move their primaries up to the first Tuesday in February. (If not 2008, then 2012.) Along with the states already camped out here, that day will be worth more than 1,000 delegates (1,098 using 2004 figures). That’s almost exactly what Super Tuesday (March 2) was worth in 2004. If this happened, there wouldn’t be much of a Super Tuesday left, and the whole thing could be settled two weeks after the Iowa caucuses — where’s the fun in that?

So what do we call this… Mega Tuesday? There’s already been one of those. Uber Tuesday? Perhaps a little too Teutonic. Colossal Tuesday? You can never really count on naming these things, but for now I’m calling it Ginormous Tuesday.