Kurt Weinsheimer of Spot Runner, Becki Donatelli and Rob Kubasko from the McCain campaign and Sam Graham-Felsen and Joe Rospars of the Obama campaign are speaking about the web and politics with Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin.

You should be able to watch the live stream of the panel HERE.

Rospars: Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe all got the importance of technology and mobilizing the grassroots. From day one, it was important that we had the website up on the day he announced his candidacy in Springfield. We put the website together in 10 days. [...]

Obama and Michelle kept saying "If we're going to be successful, it's going to have to be organic, bottom-up."

Donatelli: Two problems: money, age demographic. [...]

We found that the people who were excited about John McCain from 2000 just weren't there for us in 2008. We had to create a whole new universe of John McCain supporters. We thought the maverick brand was going to be very strong but it just didn't connect anymore.

Donatelli: McCain not only gets what we do, he gets it ahead of what we do. Let me be the first to dispel the idea that John McCain did not know what we were doing or appreciate what we were doing.

Wow, Becki Donatelli is really defensive about McCain. It's pretty funny.

Haha, Ben Smith just called Sam's BO blog "very well-read but not that interesting." Sam's response: "What's boring to the Politico is not boring to our supporters."

Jon Martin just said Obama's emergence discredited the liberal blogosphere. What!? Rospars just said "I would dispute the premise."

Good.

"There's no constituency group that is going to agree with the candidate all of the time."

Martin: "Are they diminished now?"

Rospars: "Again I would dispute the premise."

Ben just asked Sam about the blogosphere's organizing against Barack's support for warrantless wiretapping. "Did you listen to them?"

Sam: "We definitely listened. I was in touch every day with dozens of bloggers about this. Barack issued a serious statement and took them very seriously. I'm going to take my lumps from you this time but I do care what you think. I think they appreciated how seriously he took them."

"Do you think it was wise of them to organize on your site?"

"Yes."

Rob Kubasko just said that early voting has rendered the old school "72 hours GOTV" machine that the Republican Party is known for completely obsolete. "This election was lost 3 weeks before election day. Now you need to put out your final argument a month out." True.

Rospars: The greatest use of Facebook we exploited were the applications. You can do all sorts of things. When people shared video or other content, when they clicked on an application, we could show them their friends in Iowa or their friends who could early vote starting today, and ask them to contact them.

Becki has working in online politics since McCain's 2000 campaign, which Joe Trippi has said inspired him in 04.

Becki: In 2004, there were 2 lessons learned: Dean's meet-ups and Bush campaign's use of online tools to microtarget for the last 72 hour turnout machine. Our campaign probably took the wrong lesson from that. We spent way too much time speaking to the media. We should have used our technology to speak to supporters.

Feedback in the inbox:  

I want to thank the MyDD community.  Before election day, I learned more about my local races and candidates reading the diaries here than watching my local news.  Thank you MyDD!  - Carol in CA

'Nuf said.  Enjoy.

• It's about the very survival of working families says The Electrical Worker in IBEW: Election 2008 Recap.
• The national gadfly is fighting feudal economics and culture in We Are All Pakistani Women Now!
• Canadian gal peers into Michael Savages soul in The Wingnut Strikes Back.
• AJC Endorses Jim Martin as a "Fighter for the Little Guy." (andrewalker08)
• Challenging Ballots is Fun writes the mollusk, offering a brief shot of humor from Franken's knuckle-biting recount in MN.
• Timothy Gatto recommends embracing your better self in America, Islam and Prejudice.
• After 2008 Election, Some States Want to Make Voting Easier; Others Determined to Make it Harder. (Project Vote)
• An Ohio Community Needs Your Help to Ensure Green Future, and nonpartisan has the details on what you can do.
• 2hands0feet supplies avenues for GA-Sen Action: Beating Back Saxby.  Donate what time you can.

What else is on your mind?

Yesterday I attended a conference co-sponsored by Politico that featured panels chock full of advisors and consultants from both campaigns as well as several journalists to sort of deconstruct the election. One of the more interesting topics that came up time and again was whether Joe Lieberman would have been a better choice for McCain's VP -- better meaning more likely to have helped McCain win than Sarah Palin did.

The most interesting thing about the debate over this question was the difference in opinion that existed between the Obama camp and the McCain camp. In general, both sides agreed on what the turning points of the election were and what factors led to Obama's victory. But on this point, the McCain folks were intractable: Sarah Palin was the best choice for them at the time.

Was this simple spin -- the refusal to concede what is in retrospect conventional wisdom, that Palin was a disaster for McCain, or was it a sincere analysis of the strategy at the time? I think a little bit of both.

Here's pretty much how the argument went:

Steve Hildebrand, Obama's Deputy Campaign Manager: If McCain had chosen Lieberman or another Democrat, it would have taken away Barack's "post partisan" thing and would have reinforced McCain's maverick thing.

Adam Mendolsohn, GOP consultant: In mid to late August the race was so close, they needed to pick someone who would not collapse the Republican base.

Hildebrand: In the general election you need to forget about your base, they'll be with you, you need to go after moderates and independents.

Mendolsohn: I don't think it's as easy to say the base would have been there. There was a lot of discussion with folks who understand the base and how the convention works and what a Lieberman pick would mean and they were very concerned. They were saying "this will be a huge disaster." In 1992,a large part of the base stayed home. Sarah Palin was a strong solid logical pick for the base.

Mike DuHaime, McCain Political Director: Our hope with Governor Palin going forward was that there would be a connection to moderate women and independents and there was after the convention. She did appeal to working women as well as the base. Ultimately that did not carry all the way through election day but it was not initially just a base pick.

The McCain side insisted that no one else would have given them the bump they received out of the convention and the fundraising spike, without which they would not have been competitive. This financial advantage that Obama had was particularly problematic for them in the immediate aftermath of the Palin announcement when it became evident that "Obama could do 5 things at once, we could do 1" and they allowed Obama to portray Palin as an extreme right winger.

The McCain team were clearly going out of their way to defend the choice and not throw Palin or McCain under the bus and that's fine. I actually think their reasoning versus a Lieberman pick is sound. Lieberman would have been a disaster for them for different reasons. But what they laughably failed to acknowledge on that stage yesterday was just how devastating the pick itself was to McCain's viability. Once it became evident just how unprepared Palin was for top office, as Mike Allen said during a later panel yesterday, the Palin choice helped make John McCain the risky one, which gets to the heart of why McCain lost on Nov. 4th. As Obama pollster David Binder put it, ultimately:

The risk of the unknown with Obama was less than the risk of the known with McCain.

Todd blogged on this below with his thoughts, but I want to add some as well. It seems clear that Coleman is intent on having this go to the 5-person board with his having a lead. Right now, with 64% of the recount done, Coleman leads by 120 votes. The trend would indicate that Coleman winds up with a lead of less than 100 votes.

Again, I do not read that much into the challenge numbers themselves, as we don't have an overall indication as to which way the challenges are made: some are made by Coleman or Franken to challenge a vote to count and some are made by Coleman or Franken to challenge a vote to not count.  ie, they are not all challenging of the others, some are challenges against the way the votes are counted in the recount. This becomes obvious while watching the video in Todd's post on which type of ballots the Coleman campaign is challenging-- some they don't want counted for Franken and some they want counted for Coleman.

But its very clear that some frivolous challenging is going on by Coleman in order for him to maintain his lead. In Ramsey County a few days ago, there's this:

Murray replied, "If you want to deal with them, you can take my determination to court."

Then from yesterday, in today's Star Tribune, Coleman is retracting his earlier statement that he would not challenge the results of the canvassing board.

Another 10 percent is expected to be counted by tonight, and the SoS Ritchie is saying the recount could be done prior to thanksgiving, making way for all of the challenges to go to the canvassing board. There are cases where the machine count does not match up with the hand count, in total ballots.

Now, I've been paying close attention to Ramsey County. After Thursdays count, commenting:

However, Fridays results for Ramsey county showed there now being 47% counted, with Franken losing 10 and Coleman losing 45, for a net of 35 for Franken. That would appear to be a reversal of the trend, and the number of challenges show a new trend. Coleman went from having 2 challenges to having 62, and Franken went from having 8 challenges to having 53, all when only another 16 percent of the ballots were counted. Here's why:

So now, I expect that though Franken will likely whittle down the Coleman lead to less than 100 with the remaining 26% of the recount, we are going to see the 1,669 challenges to dramatically increase.

Mark Ritchie had predicted 1,500 challenged ballots, and Nate Silver had estimated roughly 1,800, both of which now seem too conservative. Chris Steller, 2500? Higher:

A division of less than 100 votes, with thousands of challenged votes remaining, is where we are headed, to the canvassing board.

- The verdict on the Bush economy is in: total disaster.

- Green jobs may be one of the few growth industries on the horizon. Here's how to get certified to rate LEED construction, a sustainable building standard.

- Asheville Green Opportunities is roaring along, offering training for underserved youth in five career paths: green building, clean energy, materials recycling, sustainable agriculture and landscaping, and ecosystem restoration.

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- How the census allows for gerrymandering based on imported prison populations.

- Life as a female reporter.

- The fossil of a grape-sized, single-celled organism may explain funny tracks found on fossilized seabed remains that appear in the record long before worm-like creatures were around.

- Over the last year, there have been 30 hate crime murders against transgender victims.

- An international panel considers suspending all tuna fishing in the Mediterranean for a year in response to dramatically falling stocks.

Happy Friday.

Some interesting developments since earlier this week when Al Franken seemed like Mr. nice guy when it came to challenging Coleman ballots. As of this posting, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune website, with 64% of votes recounted, Franken has made up 95 votes to close to within 120 votes of Coleman. It should be noted, however, that this number is with Franken challenging 848 of Coleman's ballots and Coleman challenging 821 of Franken's. Remember that all challenged ballots get removed from the count until they can be assessed by the canvassing board.

Nate Silver explains:

Meanwhile, the number of ballot challenges -- cases in which one or both candidates appeal an initial ruling my local elections judges -- has increased significantly. Among ballots added to the Secretary of State's totals since last evening, the Franken campaign has challenged 7.5 out of every 10,000 ballots, and the Coleman campaign 7.2 out of every 10,000. These figures are more than double the number of challenges on the first two days of the recount process.

Interestingly, contrary to what the tally is showing, the Franken campaign earlier today claimed that the difference between him and Coleman is actually under 100 votes.

...the Franken campaign claims the true difference is much less than that when you take into account disputed ballots that aren't included right now in the totals but are likely to be resolved pretty easily by the state canvassing board.

Even if a challenged ballot is taken out of the total recount pool for the time being, the Franken campaign thinks it has an idea of what the numbers will eventually look like based on the opinions of the election workers at the individual sites -- and they think the real Coleman lead right now is less than 100 votes...

How can this be? Check out this video from The Uptake to get a sense of just how liberally Coleman is challenging, no doubt to give the illusion that he has a wider lead than he actually does.

Clearly all these votes will be placed in Franken's column ultimately, it's just that in the short term there's no downside to Coleman's challenging them and the upside is the illusion of a bigger lead than he truly has. Nate does see a downside in the long run, however:

The disincentive to challenge ballots is precisely this sort of thing -- challenges that look so ridiculous that they'll weaken your ability to take the moral highground. If the Coleman campaign is on the ball, they'll be ready to show similar frivolities from the Franken campaign as well. The Uptake also reports that the Secretary of State is also taking under advisement a proposal to make all challenged ballots available for public viewing on a website.

Votes are still being counted in CA-04, which is the race between Charlie Brown (D) and Tom McClintock (R) for John Doolittle's seat. As the count has continued, the vote margin, which has consistently favored McClintock, has been sort of fluctuating within 1000 or so votes. Today, we've gotten some good news from the Brown campaign: now that provisional ballots are being counted, Charlie has pulled to within 359 329 votes.

This just in via e-mail from Todd Stenhouse, Charlie's campaign manager:

Including provisional ballots just reported from Nevada County, the race is now closer than it has been at any point since election day---Charlie has now closed the gap to just 359 votes! [...]

Every day, we are hearing that election day provisional ballots, thousands of which have not yet been tallied, are breaking for Charlie by substantial margins in Placer, El Dorado, and Nevada Counties.

This news is particularly sweet considering McClintock's sort of premature declarations of victory e-mails over the past two weeks.

Again from Stenhouse:

Earlier this week, our opponents arrogantly and falsely proclaimed "the fat lady hasn't begun singing yet, but she's on stage and wearing a McClintock button."  

As he watches his lead evaporate, McClintock knows this opera is far from over.  And that singer has gone backstage to re-accessorize.

Nice.

This race is closing fast. Just 2 days ago, the margin was 592. The key here is that for Charlie to win, every single vote needs to be counted but at this point, between lawyers and staff, that is an extremely expensive proposition. Please send Charlie some love HERE to make sure every single ballot is counted and to prepare for what may be an extended recount.

[editor's note, by Todd Beeton]David Dayen at calitics has the update that it's actually now down to just a 329 vote spread.