12 frogs read think get curious

Hey! You’ve got your politics in my web 2.0!

And I fear it won’t be as swell as a peanut butter cup

I am not looking forward to the next presidential election. My feelings of dread and unease about it can best be summed up as follows: I have zero faith that there will be a major party candidate or viable independent alternative I will want to vote for on the ballot, and I have only marginally more faith than that in the integrity of our electoral process. Don’t even get me started on the so-called “issues” I expect the candidates to address versus the real issues I’m pretty confident they will ignore.

So I’ve got mixed feelings about web 2.0 colliding with politics. It’s going to make it harder for me to tune out.

I don’t really care that Barack Obama has his own social networking site, that Rudy Giulani’s MySpace profile is set to private, or that John Edwards twitters. But… I know about it. I know
MySpace launched a political site. I know other people are amazed.

Today over on GigaOM, Drew Clark wrote:

There is an energy about electoral politics and the Internet that is different this time around. Almost all of it has to do with maturation of software and social networking models that could upset the pre-ordained dance between candidates, media and voters.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain where I still believe in idealism and inspiration, I think I want this to be true, I want this to happen. Of course, my very next thought is sucker!

Clark goes on to say, “If there’s a king-maker in Politics 2.0, it won’t be the likes of The New York Times or the CBS evening news.” Could it be YouTube?

If you haven’t seen it already, there is a brilliant recasting of Apple’s 1984 SuperBowl commercial, starring Hilary Clinton as Big Brother in Vote Different:

Those annoying tv ad voiceovers where the candidates say who they are and that they approved this message make a whole new kind of sense now, don’t they?

Actually there is a group out there that is trying to get a thid choice on the presidential ticket. I know, I know this is nothing new. However this group is proposing that the third choice actually be a dual ticket represented by the runner ups of the republican and democractic parties. I can’t find the original page at hte moment (I think I viewed it at home), so I’m not sure of the exact details, but this may be something that intrigues you.