Of course, like all truly-refined political junkies, I’m sure that The Moderate Voice is your one-stop-shopping choice for the best news and opinions. But looking beyond that, a new study out from the Pew Research Center examines where voters are getting their political and campaign news this year as compared to times past. Some of the results will likely come as no surprise to internet-savvy voters, but some of the items may come as a shock. Check out the results in the table below.

Television may have slipped 4%, but it is still the undisputed giant in the field. How TV news reports the campaign continues to shape the views of the vast majority of voters. The second category, though, brings us the largest shift. The internet has vaulted ahead of newspapers as a primary source of election news, registering a 23% jump over the last four years. For better or worse, more and more people (roughly 1/3 of Americans) are relying on the instant access, constantly updated news sites and thousands of blogs such as this one. Talk radio also showed a solid increase of 6%, though that’s likely to be found mostly in conservative circles.

The one number which may come as a real surprise is newspapers. They continue to suffer from a decline in circulation with reports of layoffs and papers going out of business greeting us each week. And yet, the number of people who indicate that they get their campaign information from newspapers actually crept up by one percent. I’m not sure if more people are actually reading the dead tree press or if their answers included reading the web sites of newspapers, but obviously the influence of newspapers has not yet ridden into the sunset.

It will be interesting to see how this study pans out in 2012 or 2016. With the ever-expanding availability of broadband and mobile devices connected to the web at high-speed, that 33% number may well shoot over 50 as the tech-savvy youngsters continue to age and the next, even more internet-based generation rises up and into the voting ranks.

So what does the non-English speaking world think of ‘Joe the Plumber’ - made famous by Senator John McCain when he mentioned him at least a dozen times - during his third debate with Barack Obama?

According to Patrick Etschmayer of Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper - McCain’s exchanges with Obama over ‘Joe’ - served to demonstrate once again that John McCain lacks the temperament for perhaps the most stressful job on the planet.

Etschmayer says in part:

“McCain seemed like an attacker who, lacking any effective means, tries again and again to topple a fortress and getting bruised by each and every assault, as the defender smiles down from the tower of his fortress. … And McCain seems to have known this. After launching his offensive and with full fury and throwing Joe the Plumber into the battle, McCain became ever-more aware of the fact that his attacks weren’t shaking Obama - which really seemed to throw McCain off. This was made particularly evident by his unprompted interjections and interruptions while Obama spoke.”

Then delivering the ‘coup-de-grace’, Etschmayer writes:

“Just imagine an American President at an international conference with other world leaders suddenly breaking out into bristling, scornful remarks, or even interrupting other heads of state while they explained views that differed from his. McCain offered an extremely unflattering self-portrait that no one could actually have liked - the image of a man who lacks self-confidence and a man who loses his cool at the most critical moment. … It could just be that he’s simply not cut out for a job that requires a cool head and self-control, even under the most extreme kind of stress.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The last debate only makes C-SPAN’s Debate Hub even MORE useful. Remember, all of the debates are indexed and archived — all of the Tweets, blog posts, video, transcripts, and word clouds included — so as the debates accumulate the site gets exponentially more useful.You can compare and contrast or mix and match the candidates across all or each of the debates. My full tour walks you through the site’s features. Or here’s a handy Q&A sent to me by Leslie Bradshaw, the Communications Manger at C-SPAN project partner New Media Strategies and President of the design agency, JESS3, which created and built the site:

8 questions, 8 answers Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight’s McCain-Obama debate at Belmont University in Nashville TN will be broadcast on MSNBC and C-SPAN and streamed live on msnbc.com, cnn.com and C-SPAN.

NPR will fact-check.

If you haven’t visited C-SPAN’s Debate Hub you don’t know what your missing. The site’s garnering praise from both sides of the aisle…

MyDD from the Left:

C-SPAN has a real neat Debate Hub feature on their website which is a great place to watch and follow the debate, particularly for those without a television. The Hub is also tracking the blogs — including MyDD, which I’m told was quoted on-air after the Vice Presidential debate last week — so check it out

Red State from the Right:

I have seen the future of internet political sites and it is golden — a shining city on a hill of Web 2.0 goodness and gradients. C-SPAN, stodgy network of Brian Lamb, has just beaten everyone else in the game.

Their debate hub website will make all political junkies’ lives so much easier. They’ve made it possible to search a debate timeline, watch video broken out in the timeline, extract video of my choosing, and match it with a searchable transcript. And it is darn easy.

Prior to the VP debate I did a tour that’s posted here. Remember:

The entire Debate Hub is archived — all of the Tweets, blog posts, video, transcripts, and word clouds included — so the debates accumulate and the site gets exponentially better with each debate’s passing. You are able to slice and dice the candidates answers in all kinds of ways.

If you’ve yet to see it, be sure to check it out. Right now there’s a live feed from the debate filing center. It looks like they’ve added some new features to their player since last time around.

I posted quickly last week about C-SPAN’s Debate Hub, an improved version of their very successful Convention Hubs. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to spend some time getting to know the site better with Leslie Bradshaw, the Communications Manager at C-SPAN project partner New Media Strategies and President of the design agency, JESS3, which created and built the website.

Among the new features the Debate Hub includes is Twitter integration which, like Twitter’s election site, dynamically auto-refreshes real-time updates of what people are saying about debate topics. C-SPAN also pulls in blog and media coverage from dozens of sources from all sides of the political spectrum (TMV among them). You can view all posts as they come in, or filter to a preferred site to see posts from only one source.

But the bright shining star of C-SPAN’s Debate Hub is the multiple ways to navigate video — with transcripts — from the debates. The first feature is the Debate Timeline which allows you to navigate horizontally through the debate chronologically. Each question being discussed at what times and by whom is depicted in an intuitive graphic interface: the moderator yellow, the Democratic candidate blue, Republican red.

Click on the bar for a particular candidate’s answer to a specific question and the transcript pops up. Click on the link and the video clip of the candidate is played. Expand the window and you see both side by side. If you want just a snippet — a particularly noteworthy phrase or  comment from the candidate — adjust the slider to select an in and out point, click “Embed” to copy the code, and post just that edited version of the comment to your site.

Read the rest of this entry »

The US Senate has voted on and passed the revised bailout package, adding a few billion (or few hundred billion) in add-ons and tax breaks because we have so much surplus money left we might as well spend some more. In theory this is still the original $700 billion bailout deal, but I would argue it’s closer to $1,000 billion with the add-ons.

Senator McCain votes Aye. Future President Obama votes Aye. Future Vice President Biden Votes Aye.

The official tally below.

Voting Yes (75): Akaka (D-HI), Alexander (R-TN), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Bennett (R-UT), Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Bond (R-MO), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Byrd (D-WV), Cardin (D-MD), Carper (D-DE), Casey(D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Clinton (D-NY), Coburn (R-OK), Coleman (R-MN), Collins (R-ME), Conrad (D-ND), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Dodd (D-CT), Domenici (R-NM), Ensign (R-NV), Feinstein (D-CA), Gramm (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Gregg (R-NH), Hagel (R-NE), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Hutchison (R-TX), Inouye (D-HI), Isakson (R-GA), Kerry (D-MA), Klobuchar (D-MN), Kohl (D-WI), Kyl (R-Az), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Lieberman (I-CT), Lincoln (D-AR), Lugar (R-IN), Martinez (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Mikulski (D-MD), Murkowski (R-AK), Murray (D-WA), Nelson (D-NE), Obama (D-IL), Pryor (D-AK), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Schumer (D-NY), Smith (R-OR), Snowe (R-ME), Specter (R-PA), Stevens (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), Thune (R-SD), Voinovich (R-OH), Warner (R-VA),  Webb (D-VA), Whitehouse (D-RI)

Voting No (25): Allard (R-CO), Barrasso (R-WY), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Cantwell (D-WA), DeMint (R-SC), Cochran (R-MS), Crapo (R-WY), DeMint (R-SC), Dole (R-NC), Dorgan (D-ND), Enzi (R-WY), Feingold (D-WI), Inhofe(R-OK), Johnson (D-SD), Landrieu (D-LA), Nelson (D-NE), Roberts (R-KS), Sanders (I-VT), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Tester (D-MT), Vitter (R-LA), Wyden (D-OR)

The only one to not vote, understandably, was Senator Kennedy.

Broken down by party, the Democrats voted 41-10 in favor while the GOP voted 34-15 in favor.

On the heels of their success with Convention Hubs, C-SPAN has teamed up again with New Media Strategies to build online Debate Hubs. The first goes live tonight.

New Media Strategies’ Innovation Manager Bill Beutler points to a few new features this time around:

• The Twitter roundup is on the front page and auto-refreshes dynamically
• Debate Timeline visually represents the transcript – speaker and subject – it really needs to be seen to be understood
• Word tree visually represents which words are used the most and by whom

Video is still embeddable and clippable and, of course, the blog roundup continues (TMV was included there last time around).

They’ll be covering the debate in real-time tonight, and for each of the subsequent debates. Be sure to check it out.

Even if Charlie Gibson gives a whole ‘hour’ to Gov. Palin, the interview will be scripted, edited, parts left out, spliced, and in toto, with commercial breaks be perhaps 16 minutes of Palin speaking.

But, in February of this year, C-SPAN interviewed Sarah Palin whose delivery is quite different than seen at the recent GOP convention, the C-SPAN interview more person-to-person, rather than in tones of voice usually reserved for re-telling the grand sagas. And it is 25 minutes of unscripted Sarah Palin. Watch these films: what do you see/hear in her tone, text, and subtext?

She takes calls from open lines, and gives particular views about the Valdez oil spill and the culpability of the drunken captain.

She speaks of her son being deployed to Iraq, her family’s attitude to her position in government… as one might expect in most families… more concern about their own lives as teens, than hers as Mrs. Gov.

‘Her little known fact:’ her husband is a four-time winner of the Iron Dog race… the oldest and toughest snowmobile race on the AlCan landscape.

She speaks of the polar bear and an imminent meeting with the federal sec of interior, she wanting ’sound science’ if the polar bear is to be characterized as a species con habitat under duress. She speaks about development being an issue in such matters.

She is asked about Obama’s tax strategy and his intent to raise taxes on the upper classes and corporations. Gov. Palin talks about tax cuts as her take on stimulating the economy

She is asked where the line is between middle and upper class… and speaks about cost of living in Alaska being sky high and an 80k income is not the same as 80k income in another town elsewhere in the continental US

Despite all the pundits over the last many weeks who apparently don’t watch C-SPAN and who have wrongly guessed everyone as VP pick … except her…. Gov Palin is asked directly on this film, if John McCain will offer her the VP position. Back in Feb. 08. Interesting subtext to her answer. Had any paid attention.

Wasteful earmarks and corruption are also covered on this interview.

Ethics reform ideas are put forth, but not the particulars…

It is in this part of the Interview (Stave II) that it becomes most clear that Ethics Reform, that is, ‘cleaning up’ is a bloody business… and as I listened I wondered if Sarah Palin knew just how bloody.

Though her tone and demeanor are soft in this interview, cleaning up government et al, takes hoary bristly-legged intent and an Amazonian strength to the finish… far less dove, a great deal more executioner

On this last, I’d just say, few in charge would do what Palin appears to be doing, wielding the axe herself for clean-up. Most moguls, headsmen hire someone else to be hatchetman. Rupert Murdoch comes to mind. He hired Anthea Disney away from TV Guide Publishing Corp., to chop authors and editors at Harper Collins. Which she did in a bloodbath unprecedented in mainstream publishing. In the end, after the bodies lay in the iron stench of the battlefield, Murdoch fired Disney.

Throughout history, in mythos, in the stories of our times, it is often a huge vulnerability to act as hatchetperson oneself.

Yet, reformers and revolutionaries, protectors and visionaries… and scoundrels and terrorists… often do just that.

It’s a heck of a paradox that ‘clean up’ means using cincture, marginalization, garroting and severing even, whether physically, economically, or powerwise, as a primary tool by many different kinds of ‘kings and queens, leaders and viziers’ ….to clear the way for that individual’s or group’s ‘new idea.’

Whether Sarah Palin will be able to command her new catbird seat with the axe in one hand and the dove in the other, remains to be seen.

With the emergence of Sarah Palin, this is officially the year of personal narrative in national politics–no more Bush or Clinton dynasties, but a quartet of compelling biographies to let voters choose from a menu of American success stories.

Last week it was all about Obama’s mixed racial heritage with heartland grandparents and an idealistic single mom, paired with Joe Biden’s journey, on Amtrak, from hardscrabble Scranton childhood through personal tragedy to decades of public service.

This week John McCain’s transition from POW patriot to straight-talking politician will be paired with the rapid rise of Sarah Palin from hockey mom to crusader against corruption who detoured from the Bridge to Nowhere to Somewhere Indeed.

In our llogorrheic panels’ eye view of the conventions through cable TV squeezed down into an hour of network coverage of highlight orations, there is little tolerance for all those boring speeches about policy and issues.

Read MORE.

Bill Beutler writes to fill in some of the blanks I left yesterday on what makes C-SPAN’s Convention Hub particularly interesting and unique:

• C-SPAN is putting a spotlight not just on national bloggers, but on state-based bloggers, which never make Memeorandum — delegates, credentialed and uncredentialed bloggers. And we’re working in shifts 18 hours a day (6a-12a).
• The point is to not just “cover the coverage,” but cover what happens in between. We like to say, the story isn’t being told every few hours; it’s being told every few minutes.
• C-SPAN will augment its TV coverage with flip cams for more TV coverage, while using Qik cameras to stream video on the web.
• All C-SPAN convention video goes online within minutes of airing, and it can be searched (using the closed captioning), video can be clipped to what bloggers need, and for the first time, embedded.
• We’re aggregating all Twitter postings that use #DNC08 and #RNC08 hashtags.

Here’s the C-SPAN press release. Here the TechCrunch post from Friday when the project was still in beta. On his blog, Beutler gushed about his client.

The editable embeds are the coolest feature to me. For example, Steve Benen notes that former Rep. Jim Leach (R) of Iowa got short shrift from the media. I searched for the video library for Leach (the video was the top hit), clicked on it for program details, clicked the watch flash video link, picked an “in” and “out” point, and here is my clip (pop-up blocker should be off on your browser). I did it all during my lunch break. I’ll work on embeds later…

It seems that Europeans are starting to get the jitters over the likelihood that their preferred American presidential candidate could once again be defeated.

For France’s Rue 89, Samuel Ghiles Meilhac writes of French adherence to Barack Obama:

“In France, the matter is settled: Barack Obama, our idol, the candidate of us all, in the strange political unanimity that we secretly adhere to when we look beyond our borders, will win triumphantly in November. In fact, we show almost no interest at all in John McCain, that old white-haired reactionary.”

And then, Meilhac expresses doubts:

“Remember the 2004 election and … what was his name? Ah, yes, John Kerry! He made headlines in Courrier International, Télérama and Nouvel Observateur. He was supposed to make us love a new America. He spoke French, too. We even went as far as reviving, politically and in the media, his cousin Brice Lalonde, to get him to tell us about his teenage vacations with him in Brittany. A whack in the face! George W. Bush was triumphantly re-elected. No need to recount the votes from Florida this time, the Republicans had thrashed the Democratic Party. Few people in France ever wondered why our desires and predictions were such a long way from American political reality.”

Later, Meilhac warns his readers:

“Let’s hope that in future, we will look a little more lucidly at these realities. We shouldn’t be disappointed if a President Obama isn’t thinking about us while shaving in the White House, let alone have a falling out with John McCain, who may very well prevail.”

Read the rest of this entry »