Dennis Kucinich in YouChoose Spotlight, Hits The Ground Running

John McCain's time in the YouChoose Spotlight came and went with relatively little impact. Not only did he receive just over half the viewer responses as John Edwards, but he has not replied to a single one of them. And then came Kucinich. Dennis Kucinich has managed to slide up neck and neck with McCain for subscribers after just a day of being in the YouChoose Spotlight. Granted, Kucinich put up his Spotlight video before his time in the Spotlight started, but that's just the kind of move it takes to garner support in this campaign. One of the most interesting things about YouChoose is the opportunity it creates to look at candidates as individuals and not as puppets of their respective parties. If you will, YouChoose almost acts as a multi-party primary. For young voters yet to register with a particular party, YouChoose actually offers the choice, Obama or Giuliani, McCain or Kucinich, allowing candidates to dictate party registration and not the other way around. Granted, Iraq is a polarizing issue, but the recent exit legislation support suggests that it's becoming less partisan. Anyway, who am I kidding? This entire post is just a segue to the Elizabeth Kucinich photo gallery in the post below. So without further ado, the next First Lady:

Elizabeth Kucinich Photo Gallery

Don't forget to come back at 5pm PST for live blogging of the Republican candidates debate live from the Reagan Library.

Or, see more Elizabeth Kucinich.

GOP Candidates Contemplate Their Association With Bush

Thursday night, leading GOP candidates will meet at the Ronald Reagan Presidential library for their first debate. But instead of uniting on trickle down economics or lauding our post-cold-war-era country's latest accomplishments, the main theme of the night will be the issue of whether or not each individual candidate will decide to align themselves with President Bush's current stance on topics of Iraq and health care (maybe even the environment?).

Already, the leading candidates are showing clear divisions. In formally announcing his candidacy last week, John McCain, without naming Mr. Bush, attacked the performance of the White House at home and abroad. In doing so, he separated himself from his two main rivals, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, who have chosen to stick close to Mr. Bush, or at least to avoid breaking openly with him.

The sinking ship that is President Bush's administration will yield defection sooner or later. The big question is, who jumps ship? And When?

Supporting the quagmire in Iraq does not appear to be the most prudent choice in helping anyone get elected...but what do I know. I'm just some silly little citizen. I don't really count...right?
Read more on the issue of GOP alignment here.

Barack Obama MySpace Coup

I'm sure we weren't the only ones surprised to see that Barack Obama's MySpace friends dropped from 150,000 to 13,000 overnight. Was this some sort of political tactic? Delete all his supporters and watch them grow again? We've rlearned the real explanation. According to the Associated Press:

For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves.

Finally, the Obama camp wanted exclusive control of Obama's MySpace page, a move that has sparked a very interesting and potentially landmark digital rights question. The short of it: After years of Joe Anthony maintaining essentially a fan site, garnering 150,000 MySpace supporters, he wanted to be compensated for his efforts to the tune of nearly $50,000. Obama didn't want to pay and MySpace (a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp.) intervened and handed the site right over. So, certainly this proves a valuable lesson to Mr. Anthony. Obviously, a MySpace page is on loan to the user and can be seized at any time. This is clearly stated in MySpace's Terms & Conditions:

MySpace.com reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject, refuse to post or remove any posting (including private messages) by you, or to restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to all or any part of the MySpace Services at any time, for any or no reason, with or without prior notice, and without liability.

Regardless of legality, such a decision will no doubt have ramifications. It's certainly a deterrent to anyone interested in taking the time to build similar support sites of control can be revoked by the supportee at anytime without consideration for the work invested. Will this push viralroots efforts away from social networking sites and onto the web proper? If Mr. Anthony had a website instead of a MySpace page with a tool for measuring Obama support comparable to MySpace friends, would he or anyone else be in this situation?
On the flip side of the argument, if Obama gave in to Mr. Anthony's terms and paid him out his requested money, would it spawn a string of individuals maintaining such support sites for exploit and profit? An entire market could emerge of individuals speculating on future candidates and jumping to obtain their names on MySpace.

Read the Associated Press article at BreitBart.com

YouChoose '08

Just over two weeks into the inaugural YouChoose chapter of YouTube, some interesting stats are beginning to arise. Each candidate’s home page is yielding two figures for us to evaluate: the number of subscribers and the number of channel views.

In looking at the information, it seems YouChoose has not only become a chance for candidates to interact and reach the people with their ideas, it’s now also the latest tool for polling voter interest (which we theorize is a direct correlate to the actual state of candidate support).

The more classic polls have shown Hillary Clinton leading the race in the last couple months (only recently has Obama shown the numbers to match her) but the online interest at times has appeared to run contradictory to this. If interest relates to support, then Obama the rock star should keep doing what he’s doing - since this YouChoose experiment thus far continues to show... he has interest in spades.

As of today, Wednesday May 2nd, The break down is as follows, you decide (or choose) whether you believe the internet support:

1) Barack Obama
Subscribers: 5112
Channel Views: 2,793,150

2) John Edwards
Subscribers: 2501
Channel Views: 519,658

3) John McCain
Subscribers: 1065
Channel Views: 380,967

3) Hillary Clinton
Subscribers: 1740
Channel Views: 130,384

5) Rudy Giuliani
Subscribers: 1207
Channel Views: 73,229

6) Dennis Kucinich
Subscribers: 923
Channel Views: 38,038

Although this is not a perfect measure of polling, it is at the same time impossible to refute these numbers - and draw some logical conclusions. We’ll continue to monitor and keep you updated on YouChoose '08.

Barack Obama Gets Geeky With Reddit

Barack Obama will stop at nothing to draw hacker shut-ins from their damp, Pringles- and Jolt-infested caves for one Super Duper Tuesday evening in February.

Obama Moves Ahead Of Clinton

That's right, folks. Rasmussen Reports Statistic Of The Day is reporting a statistically insignificant lead for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. John Edwards still trails by a highly significant 13 points. Statistics from rasmussenreports.com

Video: Joe Biden Not So Nice On Bush

We're going to shove it down his throat," says Biden on the topic of the Iraq funding/withdrawal bill. The "his" being George W. Bush. More transcript of the video at Politico.com