But what interests me even more is the intellectual framework writer Jonathan Dee imposes on the proceedings. While there certainly appears to be a personal element involved for Johnson — one Dee apparently wasn’t quite able to crack — there is also the possibility that events occurred as they did because the Internet elevates the importance of links and the act of linking, opening the possibility for the forging of novel (and possibly false) relationships. On the Internet, the possibility of creating new contexts is limited only by any one person’s imagination. It’s impossible for me to say whether this is true in Johnson’s case, but Dee at least presents a persuasive case.

Key excerpts:

Whatever you think of him, Johnson is a smart man, a gifted synthesizer of information gathered by other people. But just as for anyone in his position, there is an inevitable limit to what he can learn about places, people, political organizations, etc., without actually encountering them. Instead of causes and effects, motivations and consequences, observation and behavior, his means of intellectual synthesis is, instead, the link: the indiscriminate connection established via search engine. …

Regardless of whether Johnson’s view of Vlaams Belang is correct, it is notable that the party is defined for him entirely by the trail it has left on the Internet. This isn’t necessarily unfair — a speech, say, given by Dewinter isn’t any more or less valuable as evidence of his political positions depending on whether you read it (or watch it) on a screen or listen to it in a crowd — but it does have a certain flattening effect in terms of time: that hypothetical speech exists on the Internet in exactly the same way whether it was delivered in 2007 or 1997.

Fans of Don DeLillo may recall the final pages of his 1997 novel “Underworld” (no relation to the graphic novels, film series nor English techno artists) where the characters Sister Edgar and J. Edgar Hoover are joined for eternity in cyberspace, “a single fluctuating impulse now, a piece of coded information. Everything is connected in the end.” Well, I did, anyway.

Meanwhile, Dee makes a secondary point that this blurring of context may contribute to a conflation of conflicting perceptions which one may find too often in online discourse:

Not only can the past never really be erased; it co-exists, in cyberspace, with the present, and an important type of context is destroyed. This is one reason that intellectual inflexibility has become such a hallmark of modern political discourse, and why, so often, no distinction is recognized between hypocrisy and changing your mind. …

The soundest conclusion seems to be that he has indeed changed his mind — less about issues (though there are a few, global warming chief among them, on which he will admit to having gradually reversed positions) than about the people with whom he is willing to share the stage, or, perhaps, about his willingness to share the stage at all. Not that changing your mind, even in today’s political environment, makes you into some kind of intellectual hero. People change their minds all the time, for all kinds of reasons.

I cannot say that is what is happening here — I’m certainly not about to be pulled into a discussion of Vlaams Belang. And while misreadings of intentions are not new to online discourse, I think there is a “flattening effect” or, to borrow a metaphor from television, “time-shifting” of opinion which can sometimes confuse more than enlighten. Such confusion may be innocent, but it is also open to exploitation. With no information online separated by more than a few clicks, anyone can choose their own context. And in the blogosphere, some choose contexts incompatible with others’ — even if only for the sake of argument.

Wait a minute, who was that first name on the list? Could that really be Andrew Sullivan? As in “conservatism of doubt” Andrew Sullivan? Author of “The Conservative Soul” Andrew Sullivan? The same Andrew Sullivan whose strident advocacy for the Iraq war made him one of the most influential voices among the online conservative commentariat?

Who among us could ever have imagined the day would come when Andrew Sullivan would break with his ideological compatriots and move to the left? I find it hard to believe myself, but if there’s one source we should be able to trust for the ideological affiliation of a blogger at The Atlantic, shoouldn’t it be a reporter at The Atlantic?

I thought so, until this dropped into my inbox a few hours ago:

Wow, Limited Edition Fleece Blanket? This must be my lucky day!

Seriously, what on Earth is Mitt Romney doing asking Republicans, who could give money to John McCain’s campaign the RNC, to give it to himself instead? If you’re a committed Republican, what’s the most responsible thing to do in the next few weeks: Give money to put television ads on the air in Michigan Iowa, or add this comfy blanket with snazzy carrying straps to your collection of campaign-branded political paraphernalia?

But wait, it gets better. Did you see the last line of the e-mail in the image above? Here it is again, for those of you who dislike squinting:

It is more essential than ever that conservative candidates and organizations have the resources they need to get their message out to voters, and that is why I am writing to you today.

I think we can safely consider this Romney’s retaliation against McCain for picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Updated, minutes later: Wow, what timing — as I was writing this very post, another e-mail landed in my Gmail account. And it looks like someone else had the same idea:

What’s her excuse? Romney did it first?

P.S. At least Romney got a crummy, non-prime time speaking slot at the RNC. Hillary can’t say that.

The speech was about race, but I don’t believe this is the real underlying problem in the Jeremiah Wright imbroglio. One aspect of the controversy is religion, but I don’t think this is it exactly, either. Rarther, the problem is a combination of race and religion, and it doesn’t take an expert pundit to recognize that’s a dangerous combination.

As I noted in a previous post, it would be a cruel irony if the upshot of Obama’s campaign was a widening of suspicions between blacks and whites. If so, this will happen by white voters having to confront a strain of Christian thought which they are currently unfamiliar with and may not like very much once they do. And whether this strain is a prevailing belief among blacks or not, even those who do not subscribe to it just may take the opposite position out of perceived racial solidarity.

Now, I don’t claim to know much about Black Theology, other than what Wikipedia tells me (not much). I also do not know how representative Wright’s views are of the wider black electorate, but Newsweek has demonstrated that Wright’s views are not a fringe minority among prominent African-American clergy.

That said, here is the quote from its most prominent scholar, James Cone, making the rounds of the blogosphere:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

This version of the quote originated in the Asia Times, and previously appeared only in in academic books. It stands to reason that this heretofore obscure quote is going to get more significant play. Note the screen capture below of recent popular keywords on Free Republic:

No doubt Obama supporters and Democrats generally would dismiss the Freepers as populating the “fever swamps” of the right. But they’d be unwise to ignore them — and already, pro-Clinton bloggers are starting to pick up on it.

Unfortunately for Obama, his speech was not about religion. The words “liberation” and “theology” do not appear in the text of his remarks.

Obama should have gotten out in front of Wright’s anti-American rants long before this week, but he apparently chose not to address them until he was forced to do so. Likewise, he should have used Tuesday’s speech to address Black Liberation Theology itself. Too late now.

Assuming Obama wins the Democratic nomination, and that is still the way to bet, the only question now is whether this will happen during the primary or the general.

Classic hit job

against the New York Senator. Over the last 24 hours, I’ve seen a few more examples of this Clinton-Obama feud playing out across the leftosphere. For exampe, here’s Big Tent Democrat (aka Armando of Daily Kos) on TalkLeft:

Josh Marshall seems incapable of taking Hillary Clinton’s words at their face value. It seems clear that TPM is intent on ignoring the important part of this story, the pattern of sexism at NBC. This remains a very disappointing episode for TPM, both as a question of journalism and simple decency.

But Marshall isn’t the only progressive blogging entrepreneur taking friendly fire; here’s former Edwards staffer Melissa McEwan at Shakesville:

Dear Arianna,

I know you hate Hillary Clinton and everything, but do you—mother to two daughters—really believe that the best way to undermine her candidacy is by giving Stephen “Mickey’s Brother” Kaus space on your pages to unleash a misogynistic tirade against Hillary, that manages to simultaneously dismiss the concerns of women everywhere who have raised red flags over the sexist treatment of Hillary by the media?

And then there is the extreme difference of opinion over Paul Krugman’s latest anti-Obama jeremiad, wherein he accuses the Obama campaign of being like “Nixonland,” after a 1956 Adlai Stevenson quote. Ironic, considering not just the Clinton campaign’s duplicity (say, campaigning in Florida) but also the existence of the term Hillaryland.

From Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Kevin Hayden and Susie Madrak agreeing with Krugman to Hilzoy, State of the Day and Ron Chusid pretty much going WTF, the left is split along Obama-Clinton lines, and they are split almost evenly.

But are they split so badly they cannot put their differences aside once the nomination has been decided? I doubt it. Their ire is not directed at the other candidate as it is directed at the other candidate’s supporters. Rifts may persist among the bloggers themselves, but it’s difficult to see how that translates into weaker support for the eventual Democratic nominee.

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.

But even before Moulitsas’ column debuted, I think another blogger nailed the risks inherent in Markos’ accepting the assignment in the first place. That blogger was Kenton Kelly, mild-mannered Ohio accountant turned wild-mannered critic of Pajamas Media, better known as Dennis the Peasant. From his post on November 19:

I have difficulty believing Markos can pull off the very difficult task of reconciling the requirements of expressing himself as a movement partisan to two very different audiences: Netroots members and undecided voters. Each is going to have differing expectations as to what they will get out of those columns. Netroots are, I’ll wager, looking for what they’ve come to expect out of Markos; fire-breathing, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners advocacy of progressive policy positions. Understand that what I am not suggesting here is that his Netroots audience expects him to drop f-bombs and excoriate progressivism’s enemies by name as he does at DailyKOS. What they will be expecting, however, is that Markos not give an inch on issues because of any sort of tactical considerations. Expressing open contempt for triangulation and compromise on the issues is, after all, a large part of Markos’ modus operandi.

Walking that fine line between staying uncompromisingly true to Netroots’ core ideals and supporting whomever the Democrats nominate is going to be a difficult task. Unless the Republican candidate flames out immediately after receiving his party’s nomination, it is a certainty that at some point in the race the Democratic candidate is going to have to tack from left to center to gather enough votes to win. This is the precise point in time when things are going to get dangerous for a movement partisan. That’s because Markos has been quite explicit in his distain of the centrist strategies of the Democratic “establishment”. The much reviled Bob Shrum would be just the sort to swallow such a centrist shift as a matter of practical political necessity. How can Markos approve of such a shift when it comes (and it will) without drawing the ire of his supporters?

If Markos chooses to explicitly reject a centrist shift by the Democratic candidate in his Newsweek columns, how does he do so without alienating undecided (i.e., centrist) voters? At some point the decision is going to have to be made by members of the Netroots movement, and by Markos, as to whether there will ever be a time where ideological purity can coexist with the practical needs of daily politics. By this I simply mean that at some point – and I would argue that point is very close at hand – the Netroots movement will have recruited all they can recruit, and converted all they can convert, using the message and tactics they now employ. When the moment arrives where a decision between continued purity and continued growth, what will be Netroots’ response?

Now, I don’t really think Markos matters that much to undecided or moderate voters. Of the factors that will determine their ‘08 vote, Moulitsas’ pronouncements will be very far down the list, even as he’ll be in the relatively high-profile pages of Newsweek. But it will certainly be fascinating to see how individual lefty bloggers and their adherents, including the Kossacks, will react when the nominee inevitably stakes out positions problematic (even anathema) to the activist base. Brooking no compromise is a key identifying feature of the capital-N netroots; some will go along and others will protest. And Moulitsas, with his new perch, will bear the brunt of this scrutiny.

We’ve already seen a bit of this as Matt Stoller, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher have put pressure on the so-called “Bush Dog Democrats” (i.e. Blue Dogs) — especially on Iraq — while other prominent bloggers have largely avoided the specific accusation. A year from now, this cleavage will be much more apparent.

The whole Dennis — er, Kelly — post is worth reading, and I won’t quote the whole thing here (à la the late Steve Gilliard) and so deprive him of what meager traffic Blog P.I. directs (we’re nothing if not not Glenn Reynolds), but I must address his penultimate paragraph. As he wrote,

the events of the last two years have brought into question widely held assumptions about how much political influence Netroots and Markos Moulitsas actually wield. His attempt to unseat Joe Lieberman ended in spectacular failure, with Lieberman waxing Ned Lamont by 10 percentage points in a three man race. And for all the proclamations of victory after the congressional elections of 2006, what has become very clear is that many of the newest congressional Democrats have absolutely no interest in backing a Netroots agenda. It is not hard to come to the conclusion, after watching Speakers Pelosi and Reid suffering repeated defeats trying to push an explicitly progressive agenda, that perhaps assumptions of Netroots’ influence have been, shall we say, unduly optimistic. This impression was reinforced when most of the Democratic presidential candidates chose to skip 2007’s YearlyKOS convention. [Note: He's wrong about this, especially as the candidates avoided the DLC meeting entirely, but it doesn't negate his overall point.] You could certainly draw the additional conclusion, after listening to the exasperation voiced by congressional Democrats from David Obey to Steny Hoyer, that many Democrats view Netroots as much an impediment as an ally in advancing Democratic policies. How a column in Newsweek helps Markos in convincing the political class of the Democratic Party that he can deliver the goods (and is worth the trouble he causes) is beyond me.

Although Markos is no longer slagged by conservatives as going electorally “oh-fer” (despite Lamont’s loss to Lieberman, Kos et al. did back a slate of winners in ‘06) it’s very much an open question as to whether netroots issues are succeeding among Democrats. It’s not so much an open question as to whether elected Democrats are implementing their policy vision (such as it is), hence the anti-”Bush Dog” activism.

Another outstanding question is how Moulitsas and his fellow “progressives” will keep the coalition together past — and even into — the 2008 race, regardless of the policies adopted by the eventual nominee (i.e. Clinton, who never had them, or Obama, who has not always impressed them but has seen a surge (so to speak) among Kossacks recently).

As someone who reads Daily Kos much more often than non-leftroots bloggers, I can attest that a not-insignificant number comprise those who are not necessarily traditional liberals, let alone leftists, but have joined the community based on their opposition to Bush and the Iraq war. The effort in/occupation of Iraq will obviously continue beyond Bush’s presidency, but even the war has receded as an issue — at least in the general population if not on Moulitsas’ website. No wonder, as Dennis/Kelly pointed out afterward, Moulitsas insisted in his first Newsweek column that the imperative for Democrats in 2008 is to make Bush the issue.

Without Bush to kick around anymore, Markos will have a much harder time keeping his constituency together.

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.

The casual reader might wonder why strategists put their names on documents that, if made public, could eventually hurt them or their client’s standing. Reasons vary, but ultimately internal memos should have something to do with the candidate winning.

Speculation abounds John Mercurio at Hotline is a leading proponent) that Henry’s memo was leaked on purpose to lower expectations, but let’s assume that it was in fact a legitimate memorandum. Henry might have been tasked with the responsibility in the campaign or he might have long been the main proponent and was the victim of an internal fight over strategy.

But McKinnon’s memo is something all together different. He basically gave notice that he won’t help his client win if he faces a certain opponent.

McKinnon wrote that while he opposed Obama’s policies, especially on Iraq, he felt that the Illinois senator–as an African-American politician–has a unique potential to change the country. Therefore, McKinnon argued, he wanted no part in any efforts to tear down Obama’s candidacy.

Say what you will about Henry’s memo damaging Clinton, at least it advocated for a way to win the Iowa Caucus. McKinnon is laying down a marker that says “I won’t help if you run against him.” That essentially tells donors that one of McCain’s top advisers isn’t 100% on board with his campaign. It also signals to independents (and reporters) that Obama is a guy who crosses party lines.

True or not, that’s not a strategist’s job. It’s to help your client win. Henry’s name to paper makes sense; McKinnon’s does not.

His ruminations on impeaching President Bush this weekend and decision last night to cross party lines and vote with the Democrats to set a timeline for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq only underscores this perception, and could hasten a process that Swing State Project’s DaveSund envisioned earlier this week:

Like Lieberman, he’s a staple on the Sunday morning talk shows, advocating a war strategy that is diametrically opposed to his own party. But if you lined them up side-by-side, I doubt that you’d find many issues which they’d agree on. Their similarities begin and end with how they are reviled by the rank-and-file of their own party. …

So, just kind of picture this: Nebraska Republicans, increasingly upset at Hagel’s continued criticisms of Bush, line up behind Bruning. Not elected Republicans, of course. The Nebraska Republican establishment will be firmly behind Hagel. [Attorney General Jon] Bruning, surprised by the enthusiasm of his supporters, preempts Hagel’s late summer announcement by announcing that he will, indeed, run for Senate regardless of Hagel’s intentions. Hagel decides to run, setting up a showdown in May of 2008.

A lot has to break just right for this scenario to play out. First, Hagel has to decline a presidential bid — it’s hard to see how he could run as a Republican, more plausible but no less quixotic to assume the (still theoretical) mantle of Unity08. Then he would have to decide to run for re-election, which is not guaranteed. Then Bruning would have to renege on his promise not to challenge Hagel for the GOP nod. And finally, the Nebraska GOP establishment would have to stand by their incumbent. But it sounds like it could happen, even if only because it’s happened before.

Now, I don’t think Hagel is disliked by conservatives as much as Lieberman is disliked by Democrats. For one, conservatives have had their way on the war — except for everything after the invasion, of course — and Hagel has been an irrelevant nag. Until now, of course. Conservatives may be unhappy with the direction of the war, but it’s very unlikely a significant number of them will move in Hagel’s direction, and less likely still they would reward Hagel for being right, even if he is.

Right or wrong, Hagel is a prime target for Republican ire not just in his own state but nationwide: he sold out the party and sold out on the war. If he gets primaried, Bruning could be the next Ned Lamont. Well, almost:

There is one key difference, of course: if Hagel loses the Republican nomination, he can’t run in the “Nebraska for Hagel” party. Nebraska law expressly forbids running for the same office after losing the primary.

If anything, this makes a primary challenge only more likely. If the intraparty fight could extend from May to November, Bruning and other Republicans may decline to prolong the split as the party aims to unify and focus on the presidential election. Assured that no matter what, it would be over well before the national conventions, what’s the downside?