Quick Hits — December 11, 2007

Time for a little of The Good, The Bad and the Downright Ugly of Online Politics

• Let’s start with the Ugly: The travesty of political robo-calls, in which Slate’s William Saletan takes on a campaign tool that needs to die.
• Next, the Bad: Obama, Under the Clinton Microscope. Hillary staffer Bob Nash tries a little opposition research via email, forgetting that messages might just get forwarded.
• On to the Good, beginning with a pop culture/political culture mashup of epic proportions: Six Degrees of John Edwards.
• Next, in a move to outflank Edwards’s Kevin Bacon connection, Craig endorses Obama! Alas, not Larry Craig, but Craig Newmark of Craigslist, who’ll no doubt be able to provide the campaign with plenty of cheap furniture and even cheaper dates.
• Enough with the endorsements, let’s talk about the cash: Blog P.I. digs into the three main Republican online donations sites and finds Slatecard the winnah. Josh is right; give this one a close read.
• More on the fundraising front, as Bloggers Take On FEC Over Edwards’s Internet Cash.
• And we just can’t get enough of Edwards today: check out this excellent Wash Post feature that takes the words that voters use to describe the candidate to pollsters and displays them as a tag cloud. Sounds nerdy, but the results are an impressively easy and intuitive way to see what people are thinking.
• From the Good to the Sublime: Time has collected the Top 10 campaign gaffes of the year (are we allowed to hope for more before New Year’s?), complete with video (via Political Wire).

– cpd