Web War Waged For The White House
On The Internet, The Medium Is The Message - So How Do The Two Candidates Stack Up?
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Campaign '08 Web Sites
Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama each have Web sites targeted to specific audiences. As Daniel Sieberg reports, one expert says Obama's is "clean," while McCain's is "cluttered."
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Eye To Eye: Campaign Web Sites
Science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg speaks with internet expert Doug Jaeger about the separate and distinct web sites of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.
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Which Web sites catches voter appeal? (CBS)
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Campaign 2008
Profiles of the candidates, polls, fund-raising, blogs, video and more.
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Campaign Coverage
News and video from the campaign trail.
Sure, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama still make speeches, kiss babies, and do grip-and-grins - but much of the real campaign has gone online.
"It's about understanding how to use the Web to get your message out there and get your supporters to distribute it for you," said Andrew Rasiej, online entrepreneur and founder of the Personal Democracy Forum.
In this case, the medium really is the message. It's where more than positions differentiate the candidates - it's in how they're using their Web sites. CBS News went to Web design expert Doug Jaeger for his professional review, which started with a complaint.
"This is the home page, this is where we're greeting people," he said, showing McCain and Obama's Web sites. "Do you think these guys could make eye contact with us? No."
Jaeger describes Obama's site as "clean" and McCain's as "cluttered."
"He's using lots of different type faces at all different sizes, which gives you a feeling of chaos," he said.
Both Web sites target specific audiences. McCain goes after six, including veterans, lawyers and sportsmen. Obama has 18, ranging from Asian-Americans to women. Kids have their own special area, including a logo to color.
McCain offers a game called Pork Invaders on his Facebook page. Kill enough pigs, and you're rewarded ... with a statement about pork-barrel politics.
"Obama's then goes on to do what McCain's doesn't, which is to provide his supporters this whole infrastructure to organize themselves to do things that are going to help get Obama elected, and McCain's just doesn't do that," noted Politico's Ben Smith.
The Obama campaign may hope the Internet will do for Obama what television did for John F. Kennedy in 1960. Just compare the candidate's popularity on the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. Obama has 1,281,471 Facebook "friends" and 443,004 on MySpace. McCain has 192,957 on Facebook and 62,203 on MySpace.
Enter a zip code on Obama's site and you can find, or put together, events, like one fundraising bake sale organized by Arlene Geiger.
"It allows everybody who wants to do something to put their thing out there and see if people get excited about it," Geiger said.
McCain has just recently added a similar feature. He's been using a different approach to get supporters to "spread the word." The campaign supplies the talking points - you post them on a blog and get reward points for doing so - redeemable for prizes like riding the Straight-Talk Express.
But McCain's Web site is still playing catch up to Obama's use of cyberspace, and there are fewer than 12 weeks until Election Day.
"Building communities online takes time and building strong robust Web sites also takes time. So it's kind of like getting a 747 to take off from a small regional airport. There ain't enough runway," Rasiej said.
And there's no guarantee that online enthusiasm will translate into votes for either candidate.
"I don't think you can get elected president of the United States without using the Internet, but you're certainly not going to get elected president of the United States with it alone," Rasiej said.
Making the Internet has triumphed as a new voice for the people - and maybe a transformative tool for the candidates.
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See all 80 CommentsClean because Obama has no content to his platform.
Dems woulda done better nominating Rosie O''Donell for President.
Posted by RandyNason
************
Cindy "Pill Popper" McCain didn''t hurt her hand shaking hands...let''s just say she hurt it shaking the Republican Poll!
You are ignorant. More YouTube hits is not necessarily a good thing. People get tons a hits because they do stupid *** and people are like, "*** did that idiot do now?" And, a so-called left wing slanted article can''t match right wing T.V. You act as if more then 20 of you can operate a computer. You and your ilk are so stupid, you have the one candidate who could save America but you''re choosing the old crazy idiot. The one that your president talked ALL KINDS of *** about when they were running against each other...now McSame is his buddy. You and your ilk beat Kerry to death but I guess the shrub/********* is allowed to flip-flop. You have the memory of a goldfish. Get off your sister, mortgage the trailer and buy a friggin'' clue.
RosieOD4Prez
U R right. Americans are far too stupid and scared to even think of electing a "naygra". They''d rather have America driven into the ground by a bunch of old white guys who don''t give a *** about you...or me...or America. As Zappa said, "You ain''t even number 2!"..."ain''t it bleak when you got so much nothin''. So whadaya do..?"
I figured you''d need the correction.
Yes! An important point is that Americans recognized our need and demanded change and sought a President who could lead again, and drafted Obama to run. Obama is not calling for change, he is answering the call.
They''ve been trained very well by the Leftist leadership.
Good, obedient, blindly loyal lemmings.
DEMONIC-RAT HUSSEIN IS NOT THE SOLUTION,,,
EXPOSE HUSSEIN
http://www.exposeobama.com/obamaislam.html
www.obamatruth.org
www.stop-obama.org
A Video Portrait Of Barack Hussein Obama
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?RsrcID=2036
The Barack Obama Test
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/the_barack_obama_test.html
Obama-Odinga-Rezko-Ayers-Auchi-Saddam Hussein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIe4d9Nmg9k
Raila Odinga was also financially backed by Muammar al-Gaddafi. Raila Odinga is Obama''s cousin:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/717...
Why does Raila Odinga use Obama''s exact same campaign slogan: CHANGE....Vote for CHANGE: Look at his website:
http://www.raila07.com/
IMPEACH HUSSEIN NOW,,,
SIGN THE PETITION
Impeach, expel Barack Obama
http://obamaimpeachment.org
HUSSEIN IS NO COMMANDER IN CHIEF,,, lol
McCain Tops Obama in Commander-in-Chief Test; Stays Competitive on Iraq
Poll Finds 72 Percent of Americans Say McCain Would be Good Commander-in-Chief
http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/Story?id=5370538&page=1
Obama: Commander-in-(mis)chief?
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2008/07/200872011345855233.html
Gee you must need stronger glasses I can find a mountain of information in heartbeat. What is it you can''t find?
Here I will narrow down your choices -- across the top of Obama''s website there are menus, these menus will give you options once you roll your mouse across them. The second option from the left side of your screen is called "Issues".
I placed my mouse on the word Issues and the first 5 sections reading down are: Civil Rights, Defense, Disabilities, Economy, and Eduction. There are 26 other options to choose from -- which one did you want to talk about?
Put gas in your Swiftboat it tends to help
Posted by mike071067 at 10:26 PM : Aug 14, 2008
You don''t bother to take into account whether they were hits of a positive or negative nature. Most of the youtube pieces I''ve seen on McCain are NOT all that positive. And they''re not slanted that way--it''s just McCain himself, making himself look bad
Posted by laborsvoice at 02:52 AM : Aug 15, 2008
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Evidently, CBS found my prior comments regarding your post UNFIT for posting and removed them!
Evidently, it''s OK in their view to say little and go along with wars that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and vast somes of money; but it was errant of me to suggest that your applied remedy of discipline
is too lax and that I''d increase it!
So, I have just restated it in a way that won''t hurt the feelings of all the warmongering murders throughout America! Heaven knows, we don''t want to hurt THEIR feelings! Do WE?!
Posted by DemWatcher at 02:04 AM : Aug 15, 2008
You are, of course, referring to the partisan neocons who voted Bush in twice and are now ready to repeat that mistake by voting for McSame?
Oh, that''s right, neocons never ADMIT they''ve made any mistakes--just like their fearless leader, Dubya!!!
ROTFLMMFAO!
Posted by DemWatcher at 02:04 AM : Aug 15, 2008
You are, of course, referring to the partisan neocons who voted Bush in twice and are now ready to repeat that mistake by voting for McSame?
Oh, that''''s right, neocons never ADMIT they''''ve made any mistakes--just like their fearless leader, Dubya!!!
ROTFLMMFAO!
Posted by ofbyfor1 at 07:02 AM : Aug 15, 2008
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They may never admit it to us, but they''ve admitted it to themselves.
I don''t know who exactly has thought out how the site appears and works, but it is well done from a practical standpoint to find the salient features ofthe candidates approach. It is a very neat presentation of ideas and ideals. KUDOs to whoever designed that site.
I will check out the McCain campaign site this weekend. Doubt I would vote for McCain because of his war mongering and other positions, but I would like toexamine the site to assess the functionality and appeal of it.
Posted by eddom949 at 05:29 AM : Aug 15, 2008
Let''s all repeat the LIE. We''ve all heard it SO MANY times, everyone knows it by heart!! "We will cut Taxes to the Rich who will then invest that money. It will create Jobs and the money will Trickle Down to you. We will pay for the loss by cutting spending and that will balance the budget!". We''ve heard this LIE now for 30 years and our standard of living has fallen to the BOTTOM of the G-7 Nation''s, Corporations have invested the Money alright, creating jobs.. IN OTHER COUNTRIES!! People who are stupid enough to continue to buy the SAME LIE for THIRTY YEARS, KNOWING it does NOT work, deserves the results!! SIEG HEIL McSLIME
They''''ve been trained very well by the Leftist leadership.
Good, obedient, blindly loyal lemmings.
Posted by DemWatcher at 02:04 AM : Aug 15, 2008
Right !
Find those WMDs yet...
Obama''s liar, regular-politician staff will
now try to weasel out of this obvious charge
that McCain will cite Obama''s ethnicity as
a reason to vote McCain (which he never has),
by saying that he didn''''t directly say McCain
in the quote above. But he did.
Obama''s staff did exactly the same thing to
Hillary, when they twisted her LBJ comments
to claim they were racist, and to Bill regarding
his "fairy tale" remark - which was about
Obama''s claim of opposition to Iraq and
nothing more.
They are liar, regular politician and staff - who
will cut any corner to get elected.
Hillary finished this race with 21,000 more votes
than Obama - EXCLUDING Michigan. Toss it in,
it''''s a 349,000 lead. Neither won enough pledged
delegates to reach the required 2118 on their own.
And yet, Dean and the Dem brass installed Barack.
It''''s Florida 2000 all over again. And let''''s get real:
in this depression economy, would Hillary only be
leading McCain by 6 points as Obama is?
No. She''d be up 20.
Ladies (and gentlemen), if you are ready to demand
that Supers honor the majority will - or you will vote
McCain, Nader or Barr - read and sign the Nobama
Petition at;
http://tinylink.com/?I5wLAJxV5W
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Posted by straitmedia at 12:07 PM : Aug 15, 2008
That is another tactic that both Oblama and Quinton used. We are not in a depression. We are not even in a recession. The economy is down slightly. The liberal tactic of blowing everything out of proportion and making it sound worse than it really is, is starting to tire voters. Do liberals actually believe their own lies? Keep it up and McCain will laugh his way to the Oval Office.
Posted by straitmedia at 12:07 PM : Aug 15, 2008
That is another tactic that both Oblama and Quinton used. We are not in a depression. We are not even in a recession. The economy is down slightly. The liberal tactic of blowing everything out of proportion and making it sound worse than it really is, is starting to tire voters. Do liberals actually believe their own lies? Keep it up and McCain will laugh his way to the Oval Office.
-----------------------------------------
I quit my job last week, I worked for an Ecommerce Dept. They are having a hard time replacing people. And the Head Hunter I am working with told me that the IT field is Hot. Also my IT manager told me alot of outsourcing jobs are coming back. We were smart and did not take money out for our house and have been saving. Gas prices are coming down. Liberals wanted a Doom Gloom Situation so the goverment can tax everybody who works hard to give them there entitlements.
OBAMA ''08
SO A WEB SITE FONT IS GOING TO DETERMINE A DAMNED THING?
That just sounds very, very wrong.
OBAMA ''''08
Posted by texaslib at 01:52 PM : Aug 15, 2008
=====================
Too bad history will not sustain your above drizzle TexasLibtard.
Given the price of fuel these days, and the DemoTards refusal to do anything to bring it down, I seriously doubt a majority of real Americans are going to be voting to give you hyphenated-Americans the increased access to the public nipple your boy Sen. NObama is offering to buy your vote.
That what we want???
These voters -- disproportionately voters of color and young voters -- are subject to being removed from Ohio''s voter registration rolls without notice or a hearing because of the state''s vague regulations on vote caging, a process that enables representatives of one political party to challenge the voter registration credentials of voters at polling places on Election Day.
The Ohio counties with largest numbers of returned notices prior to March 2008 Presidential Primary are Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Summit, where Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo are located.
The mechanism of caging or challenging voters dates back to legislation passed soon after the 2004 presidential election.
The amended challenge law no longer requires the county boards to provide Ohio voters with notice that they are being removed from the voting rolls or a hearing for them to defend themselves of a challenge. Rather, the Ohio law permits the boards to review their own records and make a determination to the validity of the challenge.
"A single returned piece of mail is not a reliable basis for challenging the right to vote," said Donita Judge, Ohio staff attorney, Advancement Project. "Mail may be returned for many reasons, including errors in the database from which the mailing is derived, errors in the mailing labels, failure to include an apartment number or poor matching criteria."
Ohio''s current law is internally inconsistent. For instance, Ohio law permits voters who move from one precinct to another to change their address from 28-days prior to the election, up to and including Election Day. Yet, if a voter is challenged and removed from the rolls within 20 days of the Election and their registration is canceled, without notice, this cancels the effectiveness of a voter changing their address since there is no longer a registration on file. It also violates Ohio law and equal protection of the laws because this voter is not provided the same meaningful opportunity to update a valid registration up to and including Election Day as other Ohio voters.
"Voter suppression and intimidation is driven by a desire to maintain the status quo, concluded Judge." "These acts are carried out in an effort to deprive certain Americans, especially those most marginalized, of a voice in our democracy. Election Day is the great equalizer -- it is the one day where if all was right in our democracy, it would not matter if a person is rich, poor, black, white, educated or not, we all would have the same amount of power."
In the preface of his recently released book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, author Jerome Corsi writes: "My intent in writing this book, as was the case in coauthoring Unfit for Command, is to fully document all arguments and contentions I make, extensively footnoting all references, so readers can determine for themselves the truth and validity of the factual claims." Indeed, Corsi''s comparison of the two books seems quite apt: Just as Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry contains false and baseless attacks on Sen. John Kerry''s military service, a Media Matters for America review finds that Obama Nation similarly contains numerous falsehoods about Sen. Barack Obama.
Below are additional falsehoods from Obama Nation, listed in the order in which they appear in the book:
The divorce
Corsi baselessly suggests that Obama''s father, Barack Obama Sr., may have divorced his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, "following the prescripts of Islamic sharia law." Corsi''s sole source for this statement is a blogger who made the claim in a March 20 post, which featured the false headline, "BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA WAS MUSLIM FOR 31 YEARS" and misstated Obama''s mother''s name as "Shirley Ann." The blogger Corsi cited, "Majalah Bulanan Kumunitas Indonesia Di Edmonton," provided no substantiation for the claim that "the senior Obama divorced Dunham according to Sharia law."
The circumstances of exactly how or why Stanley Ann ended her marriage with Obama''s father, like much else in the narrative, remain unclear. One version is that Stanley Ann divorced Obama Senior in 1964, when Obama Junior was three years old and Stanley Ann realized Obama Senior had returned to Africa to rejoin the previously undisclosed wife he had abandoned in Kenya. The other version is that Obama Senior, following the prescripts of Islamic sharia law, divorced Stanley Ann when he returned to Africa in 1963 to begin his work as a bureaucrat in the Kenyatta government.4
The endnote for Corsi''s claim reads as follows:
The first version, that Stanley Ann Dunham Obama divorced Obama Senior, is the version commonly found. The version that Obama Senior divorced Stanley Ann under sharia law is told in sources such as the following: Majalah Bulanan Kumunitas Indonesia Di Edmonton, "Barack Hussein Obama was Muslim for 31 Years," March 20, 2008, at
The senior Obama married a fellow student, eighteen-year old Shirley Ann (Anna) Dunham of Witchita, Kansas. Dunham was an anthropology student. Obama Jr. was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu.
Two years later, the senior Obama divorced Dunham according to Sharia law and returned to Kenya the same year that Kenyatta took control as the first prime minister of a self-governing Kenya (June 1963).
In Dreams from My Father, Obama quotes his mother stating of Barack Obama Sr., "I divorced him":
The teapot whistled, and I stamped my envelope. Then, without any prompting, my mother began to retell an old story, in a distant voice, as if she were telling it to herself.
On Pages 49-50, Corsi falsely claims that Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother or his grandparents. Corsi writes:
Interestingly, Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii, especially during the years his mother abandoned him to return to Indonesia to be with Lolo [Soetoro, Obama''s stepfather].
In fact, while the 2004 edition of Dreams -- the version Corsi cites in Obama Nation (Part One, endnote 2, Page 306) -- does not contain a separate dedication page, on Page xvii, the last page of the book''s introduction, Obama writes:
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