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Archive for the 'John McCain' Category

John Edwards Was Born to Run

Published by William Beutler on January 30, 2008 in Barack Obama, E-mail, Fundraising, John Edwards, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 1 Comment

Here’s an e-mail from the John Edwards campaign sent Tuesday morning:

John Edwards’ last e-mail pitch

And here is what AP is reporting within the last hour:

Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters’ sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned.

The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two of his advisers. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning—Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The fundraising pitch bothered me plenty yesterday. Edwards presented himself throughout this campaign, as he did to some extent in 2003, as the populist reformer who would fight the big corporations on behalf of the little guy, whom only he represented. It’s not the kind of candidacy that attracts my interest, but it certainly has its place in Democratic politics.

That is, until several rounds of voting demonstrate that one does not in fact represent very many people. And yet here he was, the week following yet another epic fail, asking those same “little people” to throw their good, hard-earned money after his bad, weakening campaign. Today, he’s finally doing the right thing. But it bothers me even more that he was still trying to raise money less than 24 hours before throwing in the towel.

So why today? It is perhaps a clever partisan move to drop out on the same day Rudy Giuliani is withdrawing to back John McCain, and I respect the gamesmanship. But it also reminds me of Saturday evening, when his non-concession speech all but cut off Obama’s actual South Carolina victory speech. That’s John Edwards for you — a narcissist. So are most politicians, but he’s among the worst: He’s a narcissist who says he’s doing it all for you.

Richelieu is to Mike Murphy as…

Published by William Beutler on December 1, 2007 in John McCain, Mickey Kaus, Mitt Romney, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Did Mickey Kaus just out the Weekly Standard’s pseudonymous Campaign Standard blogger Richelieu as GOP consultant Mike Murphy? Given Mickey’s usual tongue-in-cheek phrasing, this is as close to an accusation as he’ll get without (disclosable) proof1:

**–I think this argument was made by Weekly Standard’s Richelieu. Or maybe it was consultant Mike Murphy. I get them confused sometimes! … 7:09 P.M.

Richelieu wrote the Campaign Standard’s latest post at 12:14 p.m. on Friday; there’s no response yet from him nor any contributor to the blog. (Bill Kristol, Richard Starr and others write for it, but Matthew Continetti is listed as the editor and his caricature is featured at the top. Nice work.)

To be fair, I haven’t read enough Richelieu to recognize one of his arguments, though I’m aware he’s been hitting Huckabee lately. And I haven’t paid enough attention to Mike Murphy’s “Meet the Press” comments, other than those about Fred Thompson2.

But Kaus wouldn’t be the first to make the insinuation. On September 27 a Ramesh Ponnuru post at The Corner said, and I quote in its entirety:

The Standard has a new campaign blog. My guess is that “Richelieu” is Mike Murphy.

Why would Murphy want to conceal his involvement, if indeed he is Richelieu? Possibly because he was a top strategist for McCain in 2000, was more recently a consultant to Mitt Romney, and wants to avoid having to comment on them publicly. But Murphy has been on “Meet” twice this year in a recurring panel featuring Bob Shrum, James Carville and Mary Matalin. Maybe it’s different, appearing on a talk show and writing blog entries. It’s no different ethically, but a nom de plume would allow him to write more frankly. On the other hand, he wrote a column for The Hotline from 2003-04 called “Backseat Driving” under his own name. On the other other hand, none of his former clients were running for president then.

To reiterate before hitting “Publish,” I’m not saying Murphy is Richelieu. If he’s not, that could be pretty interesting, too. Keep an eye on the Campaign Standard.

P.S. Of possible relevance: Murphy was, briefly, a producer on CNBC’s briefly-appearing “Dennis Miller” talk show which, I might add, I always thought was underrated. Left-wing FAIR, kind of a forerunner to Media Matters, hit Murphy at the time for producing the show while serving as a consultant to Gov. Schwarzenegger. Also possibly relevant: Kaus sometimes appeared as a guest on the show’s “Varsity” roundtable.

1 Unless maybe it’s John Edwards.

2 Non-”Standard” standard disclosure.

Fundraising Awareness

Published by William Beutler on August 16, 2007 in Blog Consultants, Fundraising, John McCain, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, MSM, Online Fundraising, RedState, Republicans and Startups. 3 Comments

Earlier in the week Matthew Mosk, a political reporter for the Washington Post, posted to Post.com’s The Trail an arguably unhelpful and inarguably un-insightful post about the disparate fates of the best-known online fundraising apparatuses (apparati?) of Democrats and Republicans:

Democratic candidates for federal office have seen more than $25 million come through the web site ActBlue — some of which will eventually flow to the Democratic National Committee for use during the general election. Republicans, meanwhile, have seen just a tiny ripple of activity on the ABC PAC web site — $385 raised for the presidential candidates to date — which is supposed to be ActBlue’s direct competition.

Sure, at one time it was supposed to be. But as this blog and other blogs have pointed out, it’s never had the kind of support such that it should actually be spoken of in the same sentence. Not to mention that several journalists, including Mosk’s colleague Chris Cillizza, have (apparently ignorantly) misrepresented what ActBlue means to different Democratic candidates.

Mosk’s brief report is of a piece with this, not knowing or bothering to differentiate between the two websites. Is it fair to point out that Democrats are doing better with their independent online fundraising tools? Absolutely. Is it fair to compare ActBlue’s total fundraising figures over three cycles compared to ABC’s (admittedly underwhelming) year in existence? Not without explaining the situation, it’s not.

But it gets worse:

Now there is a new effort to change that. R. Rebecca Donatelli, a pioneer of Internet fundraising who help raise some of the nation’s first online dollars for John McCain in 2000, has revealed she and partner Michael Palmer are working on a new, and she hopes improved, version of ABC PAC to launch this fall. While she continues to work on behalf of McCain, she said she is optimistic the improvements to ABC PAC will help all of the Republican candidates. Given the numbers they are posting on the site right now, it would be tough to make things worse.

This “new effort,” as Mosk doesn’t adequately explain, is a second go at the same operation by the same person responsible for ABC’s ineffectiveness. Worse, though, Mosk is apparently unaware of other new ventures by GOP activists in the same space. Even before Mosk’s posting, there were two new efforts gearing up to do same thing:

Both sites have yet to prove themselves, sure. But considering that Mr. Mosk was moved to write a post about ABC PAC, isn’t this worth an correction? Or better yet — another post?

Wanna Buy Some John McCain Domain Names?

Published by William Beutler on June 23, 2007 in Cybersquatting, Domains, Entertainment, John McCain, Online Campaigns, Republicans, SEO and White House '08. 2 Comments

Disclosure: I figure any time I write about the presidential campaign, especially on the GOP side, I should note that my employer is on the web team for Fred Thompson’s “testing the waters” committee — and that all observations here are my own.

Once Stephen Colbert signs off, and I’m not supposed to be asleep, I’ll usually click over to “The Tonight Show.” Sorry, Dave, but it’s mostly because Conan follows on NBC (the headline is supposed to be a reference to your line from Cabin Boy, though the wording is more like a Dan the Automator album).

Jay Leno’s “found on eBay” segment* is his most Conanesque skit, down to the big reveal — whether the ridiculous item on the block (tassel hats for house pets, a penny for $10, etc.) found a bidder. It’s a simple game, not dissimilar from Colbert adding comments to Amazon and iTunes, and anyone can play along at home. In fact, I’ve been playing all week.

On Tuesday, Mickey Kaus posted a brief (arguably immigration-related) item pointing toward the auction page (#170121848086) for twenty-six John McCain-related domain names:

Fire Sale? McCain domain names, on sale cheap (so far) on E-Bay. … [Tks. to reader M.W.] 7:22 P.M.

$150 for the lot, not an unreasonable estimate of worth and certainly lower than many premium domain names change hands for. And hey, there’s even “free” shipping (i.e. e-mailing some passwords)!

And yet, no bids. Here’s what the page looked like as of Thursday night:

26 John McCain Domains Up for Auction on eBay

During the week I checked in to see how the bidding was going — or wasn’t — down to the final seconds (I said I was watching closely) at “14:51:26 PDT” or 5:51 p.m. EDT:

Final seconds of 26 John McCain Domains Up for Auction on eBay

But would an eBay sniper emerge at the last moment, from the McCain camp or possibly a rival, to secure the lot with a single bid?

Bidding Ends on 26 John McCain Domains Up for Auction on eBay

Nope. Apparently cheap isn’t what it used to be.

Despite being linked by Kaus, the counter on the page only recorded ~740 views by the end of bidding — dozens of them being yours truly. According to eBay policy, the seller can post it again once more free of charge, so a second round may be attempted.

If so, it will probably be at a lower price point. But even $150 for 26 domains surely represents a net loss for the seller. (The price per domain works out to $5.75, but an individual buyer isn’t going to get initial registration that cheap.) It’s clear this domain hoarder was bailing on the investment: McCain’s moment seems to be over and the owner was trying to cut his losses. But his timing was off, not just his pricing.

And to be fair to the McCain campaign, they have no use for the domains. They already have JohnMcCain.com, for one thing. And the McCain Internet team is unlikely to borrow a slogan that makes no sense from someone who doesn’t put McCain’s interests first.

These domains are all parked courtesy of GoDaddy, so they aren’t causing the campaign any trouble. The seller doesn’t sound interested in launching an anti-McCain network, but even if he did, the domain alone wouldn’t make it a hit. The other three GOP frontrunners have each inspired anonymous oppositional blogs — shady, personality-free repositories of oppo material that go mostly unlinked and must be found via search. I haven’t seen one for McCain, but if one did materialize, it wouldn’t be among the campaign’s top concerns.

To don my Captain Obvious cap (temporarily removing my P.I. shades), having the perfect domain name contributes nothing to sustaining reader interest and confers no intrinsic value. Several of the most popular political blogs started on or still operate on a blogspot.com subdomain.

The usefulness or danger of an independent McCain-themed website is not determined by domain, but content. Type-in traffic is neat but miniscule. Search traffic is worth more, but won’t build an audience. Still the best path to large and sustained volumes of traffic is by being interesting and getting bigger websites to link it.

These domains may be SEO optimal, but they sure sound canned.

Bonus: Full list of 26 domains that nobody wants, with analysis, excerpts of the sales copy — and a resolution to that dangling asterisk — after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Wanna Buy Some John McCain Domain Names?’

McCain Adviser Making Life Difficult for McCain

Published by Not Paul Begala on June 7, 2007 in Barack Obama, Brick-and-mortar consultants, Hotline, Internecine Battles, John McCain and White House '08. 1 Comment

Man, is this ever an interesting month for campaign memos. First Mike Henry’s missive about Hillary skipping Iowa and now this little bombshell from McCain adviser Mark McKinnon (hat tip: Political Wire).

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.

The Good Fight: On The Google Bombing Campaign of 2008

Published by William Beutler on May 22, 2007 in George W. Bush, Google, John McCain, SEO, Stephen Colbert and Wikipedia. 5 Comments

When it comes to monkeying around with Google search results, MyDD is the undisputed leader in the political blogosphere. In a comment thread there yesterday, the appropriately-monikered Monkey in Chief is already thinking ahead to the bombing campaign of 2008:

Considering that there is a lag before Google’s index will be updated, it’s likely prudent to start the 2008 Presidential Gooblebomb once the Republican nominee is known.

I wonder if an early round targeted at all the candidates (except maybe Ron Paul should link to sites what emphasize his opposition to the war) wouldn’t be of value. The only downside to starting early is that it gives the other side more time to respond.

An advantage of an early start is that Google may be getting tired of having their algorithm gamed and reduce the influence of a sudden spike of links. In this case, starting early would be an advantage.

As a defensive measure, we should reverse good Googlebomb the Democratic nominee with links to official and favorable websites once the Democratic nominee is known.

These are questions the underdog online Republican activists should be asking themselves as well. The Google wars rage on, and as every strategist knows, fighting the last campaign is rarely enough.

The Chief is correct about Google’s displeasure with overt efforts to “optimize” its search engine: Google bombs for “miserable failure” (George W. Bush), “waffles” (John Kerry) and “greatest living American” (Stephen Colbert) have all been defused, though news coverage of each remains.

So a gradual effort would make sense. But which sites do you choose? Will the strategic decisions of mid-2007 hold up in late 2008? Might Google step in and make an editorial judgment again anyway?

That’s why I’m intrigued by the reverse-Google bomb; not only is a preventive strategy wise, I presume the Oracle of Mountain View is unlikely to step in and demote a positive website — so the chances of the effort being wasted are much lower. Even if one goes the negative route, it still makes sense to match search terms with a website that actually contains those terms. The aforementioned trio of Google bombs were easy to identify because they were so obviously contrived. That said, an ongoing effort to associate John McCain’s name with negative coverage appears to be failing, at least so far.

Websites to avoid include the candidate’s Wikipedia entry and official site, which are already likely to be near the top. News stories are also risky, as a news organization could move the location of a particular story at any time, for any reason, without warning.

So what kind of site should the positive-bombers select? Here’s an idea: The participants should set up a brand new advocacy blog for that candidate, to which they can link the candidate’s name when blogging at their own sites. Not only will the new entry rise to the top, but if the blog is well-maintained, it will generate multiple entries that will rise to the top of the results as well.

Most SEO guides advise that the best recipe for success is to create content that people want to click on, link to and read. That should apply here, too. Don’t muck up the results — create the results you want people to find.

The Google wars probably will never end. But this is one way to neutralize the damage.

The Google Primary II: Buy Your Rivals

Published by William Beutler on April 9, 2007 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Google, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Online Campaigns, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 9 Comments

Yesterday I managed to get a whole post out of the observation that most, but not all, of the top tier candidates are buying up their own names on Google AdWords. In this post, I’ll try to get some mileage out of reporting something more interesting:

The candidates who are bidding for their own names on Google’s advertising program are also bidding on their opponents’ names.

To take one example, when you search for Mitt Romney on Google, one of the ads you’ll see in the AdWords column along the right-hand side will be for John McCain. So I ran searches for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, and then I compared the results. If the image below hurts your eyes to read, right-click on the image and open a larger version into another browser tab. Here’s what I found, in the order listed:

2008 presidential candidates on Google AdWords

When you run these searches, slightly different ads come up each time. It’s probably in Google’s interest to mix it up some, not to mention a number of advertisers may be bidding the same amount on some of these phrases. Therefore, the image above is only meant to give a general idea of what ads will appear. For example, since I Photoshopped that together last night, I’ve now seen a Giuliani ad appear in a Romney search. It isn’t reflected above, but it has been factored into this post.

Okay, but who all bought who? Here’s whose name/keyword was bought by whom — keyword, then campaigns:

Clinton
Obama
Giuliani		 Romney
McCain
Giuliani		 Giuliani
McCain		 McCain
Romney
Giuliani

If you’d rather see who bought whose name as a keyword, try this on for size — campaign, then keywords:

Obama
Clinton		 Romney
McCain
Giuliani 		Giuliani
Hillary

McCain
Romney		 McCain
Giuliani

You can probably do all the same armchair analysis here that I can. Obama’s camp believes he can win over Hillary Clinton people (supporters, or those interested enough to Google her name), Romney’s team hopes to win over McCain people, McCain aims to pull support from both his GOP rivals, and the Giuliani squad is on a comparative buying spree, to the point of wooing some Hillary supporters. For some reason, nobody is bidding on either Edwards or Obama.

Meanwhile, in a post seemingly anticipating this one, Oregon Dem consultant Kari Chisholm observed:

The point of a Google ad isn’t to find people who know they’re looking for you — they should be able to find you just fine. It’s to find people who are looking for something else; and your candidate is the answer to their question. This will work even better for the second-tier candidates who aren’t getting much media attention.

I didn’t find any second-tier candidates bidding on the top-tier names, but he’s right: They should be. I also didn’t venture any further than the top six candidates as generally agreed upon by looking at polls, fundraising and what how the Washington Post/New York Times axis treats the various contenders. Another mini-study such as this might turn up some interesting results for other candidates, and other phrases that on which campaigns have bid.

Additionally, election campaigns are not the only customers bidding for higher-placed ads on Google AdWords — they are joined by various for- and not for-profit enterprises, who seek to associate their products and programs with the candidates listed. Here’s what I found, based on the screen caps taken on Saturday night:

  • YouTube — that is, Google — bought everybody. They also bid the most. Hmmm.
  • The Pew Forum, not (yet) owned by Google, was the only other website/organization to bid, and bid high on the words.
  • The Center for American Progress’ Campus Progress bought Obama, and Obama only.
  • Something called Ascend Alliance — which appears to be a student exchange program without the students — has bought Romney, but no one else.
  • The do-gooders do seem to like Romney: the One campaign claims “Romney wears ONE band.” The ONE blog provides evidence, although it could simply be that he held one in his hand.
  • Human Events bought Giuliani and more curiously, Obama as well.
  • Cringe-inducing pro-voting groups have attached themselves to Edwards (generationengage.org), Rudy (declareyourself.org) and Romney (megadittoes).
  • Moviefone and Tickets-for-Events.com are both betting that people mistake John Edwards for John Edward of “Crossing Over” fame (or “fame”).
  • Hillary, Obama, Edwards and Romney all have obviously for-profit concerns bidding on their words — selling buttons and T-shirts, mostly — perhaps saying less about how well they think those candidates will sell than about how the others will not. The market has spoken — and Republicans aren’t moving units so well these days.
  • Hillary, Obama and Romney are all popular enough as keywords that a link at the bottom of their columns will take you to more ads, if you wish.
  • Trouble for Romney: one of the websites bidding on his name is ConservativesAgainstRomney.com. Lucky for Giuliani, sister site ConservativesAgainstRudy.com does not appear to be bidding on his name.
  • On the other hand, the Conservative Book Club appears to have bid on Romney and Romney only, so he should be reassured that not all conservatives are against him.

Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Update: Credit where it’s due: Jeff Jarvis had this idea last week, although we went about it in different ways. Meanwhile, Kate Kaye at the ClickZ News Blog decided to see which candidates had bid on certain issue-related keywords:

iraq war, troop surge, social security, poverty, global warming, climate change, new hampshire, homeland security, terrorism, immigration, us attorneys, alberto gonzales, iran, iran nuclear, nuclear weapons, china trade, trade deficit, wmd, afghanistan, pelosi syria, british sailors, retirement, gay rights, women rights, feminism, labor rights, minimum wage, living wage, abortion, pro life, roe v wade, draft, military draft

So who bought those key words? Apparently none of them.

The Google Primary I: Paying, Or Not Playing

Published by William Beutler on April 8, 2007 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Google, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Online Campaigns, Rudy Giuliani, Second Life and White House '08. 4 Comments

Considering that Google controls just about half of the market for search in the U.S., that Google estimates its advertising network reaches 80% of U.S. Internet users, and that their program is extremely flexible, any political campaign should think strongly about using them. And even though pay-per-click ads are not without risk, this should be all the more true for a presidential campaign.

I’m working on a longer post looking at the 2008 candidates’ use of Google AdWords, but in the meantime, let’s first see who is playing and how they’re playing. Counting only the top six contenders from both parties, here’s what each campaign wants you to see at the top of a Google search results when you search for their name:

Giuliani's Google Sponsored Link

John McCain's Google Sponsored Link

Mitt Romney's Google Sponsored Link

Hillary Clinton's Google Sponsored Link

Barack Obama's Google Sponsored Link

John Edwards' Google Sponsored Link

Hillary has incorporated Blogads into her online strategy and Edwards has been running an online campaign since early 2005, yet neither have bothered to make sure their campaign sites are the top result on Google. (Of course, Google News results do appear beneath the Sponsored Links for the others, but I have cropped them out.) Although Democrats have rushed into Second Life and other brave new worlds, apparently two of their top contenders are ignoring plain old Google.

A few other findings, based on tedious reloading of the same searches, over and over:

  • Obama is indeed playing, but he’s not all in. His ad displays less than half the time — so if you don’t see it, hit reload.
  • For all three Republicans, their Sponsored Link appears almost every time, but not quite.
  • McCain has three different versions of his ad in rotation. Key phrases: “Learn More” and “Sign Up.”
  • Romney also has three versions rotating. Key phrases: “Build a New American Dream” and “Strong. New. Leadership.”
  • Giuliani has just the one pictured above.

More later. Stay tuned.

McCain Spaced

Published by William Beutler on April 7, 2007 in John McCain, MSM, Online Campaigns and Social Networking. 1 Comment

To the list of political reporters/editorial teams perpetuating misconceptions about the 2008 online campaign, add Jim Hopkins/USA Today for not recognizing McCainSpace as the social network it is not.

USA Today perpetuates the myth of McCainSpace

The caption is not incorrect: John McCain indeed “urges supporters to create their own pages on his on McCainSpace online community.” But the caption does lead one to believe that there is an “online community” at John McCain’s website, yet even a cursory inspection leads to the conclusion that this belief is unfounded.

The text of Hopkins’ “The 2008 candidates are running ‘e-lection’ campaigns” story makes no mention of the incompetently executed/purposefully deceptive asocial network the McCain campaign continues to foist on its website visitors, which, coincident with that unsufferable headline, leads me to believe the blame in fact lies with USA Today’s editors and not necessarily Hopkins himself.

That said, his name is on the story, and others may not appreciate the division of newsroom labor. So the next time Mr. Hopkins writes about the “e-lection,” I hope he looks a little closer, then makes an effort to edit his editors.

Honorable Mentions II: Where the 2008 Candidates Stand Today

Published by William Beutler on April 3, 2007 in Barack Obama, Charts and Graphs, Democrats, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Trend Tool and White House '08. 2 Comments

Two months ago, Blog P.I. ran searches on the names of the top-contending 2008 presidential candidates through the Trend Tool at blog search engine Icerocket to see how often a candidate’s name appeared in blog posts over the previous month. We weren’t counting the positive or negative mentions, so this didn’t tell us how popular or unpopular a particular candidate was — but it did give a pretty good idea how intense was the interest in one candidate relative to the others.

Today we’ll update that, covering the time elapsed. We’ll start as we did before by comparing the top three contenders for both party. Although there has been relative movement among them, nobody new has clearly broken through or fallen out of each trio. Then we’ll get to the dark horses and mix things up a little.

Last time we started with the Dems, so let’s switch it up and begin with the GOPers:

Giuliani vs. McCain vs. Romney

Giuliani vs. McCain vs. Romney

McCain may not be the frontrunner any longer, but he apparently remains the most talked-about candidate. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what was happening with McCain during the spikes recorded here, so I went to Google BlogSearch, which lets you isolate search terms by date. The first spike was certainly nothing good — mostly posts about about his slipping support. The second spike coincided with his semi-unofficial announcement on the Letterman show, where comments ran a little better — but it also occasioned his slip of the tongue about lives “wasted” fighting in Iraq.

Being the new frontrunner, Giuliani only had two short-lived leads in early February and March. The first peak coincided with his statement of candidacy, and pales compared to McCain’s; the second appears to match up with the New York firefighters union — the Swiftboaters to Rudy’s Kerry? — releasing a letter opposing his bid. Otherwise, he seems to run consistently behind McCain and about even with Romney.

Romney’s first spike? His announcement at the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. His second spike was the CPAC conference — which explains why Giuliani actually saw his highest absolute mark for the period here as well, and perhaps why McCain experienced another short peak — much of which was probably about his decision not to attend. Actually, that may have been for the better — because as we all remember, the whole event was overshadowed by Ann Coulter. So let’s make a brief detour and look at how Coulter stacks up for the period against the candidates she appeared with:

Ann Coulter vs. Mitt Romney vs. Rudy Giuliani

Coulter vs. Romney vs. Giuliani

Yeah, that looks about right. How about the Dems?

Hillary vs. Obama vs. Edwards

Hillary vs. Obama vs. Edwards

When we last measured, all three candidates were just beginning to pick up serious attention, Hillary for her campaign launch and Obama for his exploratory announcement. But where Hillary was the slight leader last time, now she is clearly underperforming relative to her name ID. The huge spike for Obama centered around the weekend of Feb. 10 and 11 represents his more-official kickoff and the launch of his newfangled campaign site, which drew a good deal of positive notice. He commanded plenty of attention in the weeks after, but lately appears to be no more or less interesting to bloggers than Hillary. This could be a sign that the initial rush of attention has subsided, and he’s just another candidate in contention.

Oh, and that peak they share a week and a half after Obama’s announcement? That’s the argle-bargle started by David Geffen’s anti-Hillary comments to Maureen Dowd.

The Edwards spikes require no Googling: The first was Ann Coulter’s aformentioned braindead attack, and the second was the announcement that Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer had returned. Both have clearly earned him a good deal of attention, making him arguably the most interesting candidate of the Democratic field right now. On the other hand, while that attention has been positive, both instances are predicated on bad news — not exactly sustainable, or something you would want to sustain, anyway.

Now, onto more arbitrary comparisons:

Thompson vs. Gore vs. Bloomberg

Thompson vs. Gore vs. Bloomberg

As long as reputable pollsters are putting Al Gore into the mix, who am I to say they’re wrong? Likewise with Bloomberg — as long as respectable newspapers are writing stories about the possibility of a self-funded bid, who am I to leave him out?

Now, Gore just picked up an Academy Award for “An Inconvenient Truth” (as if you didn’t know what that huge spike in late February was about). And Fred Thompson, well, perhaps he’s just entertaining himself right now (but at least he did appear on a Sunday show recently). For these reasons, and because Bloomberg has a mighty populous city to run, I decided to append the word “president” to each search, just to keep things on topic. It didn’t change much.

That appearance was March 11, but interest has sustained relatively well until surging last week for no reason I can divine from patterns at the Blogsearch — but I’m guessing it has something to do with the first round of polls showing him with some credible support.

Bloomberg is still waiting for his surge. He may be waiting awhile — that near-flatline does accurately represent the (lack of) interest in such a campaign. For mirror-opposite reasons the same is true of Gore: he is larger than life, and if he did run, it’s not implausible that he could — as his former boss was always said to do — suck all the oxygen out of the room.

Edwards vs. McCain vs. Gore

Edwards vs. McCain vs. Gore

So here we compare the relative leaders in online mentions among the Democrats, Republicans and dark horses. (Yes, overall Obama has run stronger than Edwards this period, but let’s go with Edwards, who is closer-watched/has had bigger spikes lately — even if he has fallen into third in just the past few days.)

Clearly Edwards cannot compete with Gore’s Oscar — apparently only Coulter can do that — but aside from that, he doesn’t run too far behind. And McCain is at least competitive. He doesn’t have those huge spikes, but he has led Edwards several times (and upon his Letterman announcement, even Gore, briefly).

Hillary vs. Giuliani vs. Thompson

Hillary vs. Giuliani vs. Thompson

So how about those underperforming frontrunners, and the next-most-popular dark horse? Well, Rudy is no match for Hillary. This does seem to show that while he leads the traditional polls and has appreciable support among bloggers, he is not really the “rightroots” candidate — Thompson has been doing almost as well since his announcement. Their mentions rise and fall together enough to be worth mentioning, suggesting that the two are being compared against each other. Hillary’s mentions, however appear to be completely unrelated, and that makes sense as well. Even at their best, neither Giuliani nor Thompson have bested Hillary in blogger mentions this period.

Once again, we’re just measuring mindshare, and with the exception of Bloomberg, all of the candidates here have demonstrated the ability to capture it. So who knows whether it’s good to be a leader in these charts or not. Maybe that’s another study, for another time. For this time, we’ll leave it right here.