With votes finally about to be cast for the 2008 presidential primaries, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the end of this silliest of seasons is within sight. But before a single vote is tallied, let me make this simple observation: The MAN is going to win. The MAN always wins, and until something earth-shattering happens in American politics, the MAN will always win. Call it the Law of MAN.

Who da MAN? Well this year, that's Hillary Clinton and John McCain, of course. You see, the MAN is the Media's Anointed Nominee.

Two, three, and sometimes even four years before a given presidential election, Washington D.C.'s intelligensia and punditocracy proclaim who the next nominee for each party will be. Because many of these very serious people have a strong voice or influence in the mainstream media, the meme gets repeated throughout the country and a MAN for each party is determined well before anyone throws their hat into the ring. That's what I mean by the Media's Anointed Nominee.

The diaries at MyDD have largely ignored the Gore-mania going on in other parts of the blogosphere. There's been a hilariously logical proclivity to talk about the actual candidates running for the '08 Nomination. Well it's time to change that. I'm happy to announce the launch of a new Draft Gore effort:

http://www.forgore.com

The idea is simple: ForGore.com is a video blog featuring Americans like you who want to see Al Gore jump into this race. Most importantly, ForGore.com needs you (yes, you!) to make your own video right now and submit it to the site.

To close his YearlyKos Keynote, Markos said that "together all of us will build a true progressive America". The important word in that statement is will, because we haven't gotten there yet, nor are we even close. As evidenced by the recent goings-on in Congress, we're simply not a progressive America. But over these past six months we've seen the traditional media's irresponsible and hype-driven coverage of the presidential race infect the Netroots. We've bickered with each other over small details about candidates who, in the end, will all make strong Democratic nominees, and who all can govern as truly progressive presidents. Once we accept those two simple and obvious realities, we can refocus our energies on continuing what we started in 2003: building a true progressive America.

As Todd Beeton wrote yesterday, it seems that many of us are cocky and confident about gains in Congress. What we should be confident about is our chance to take back the White House. President Bush's approval ratings are at historically low levels, and come election time the already lackluster Republican nominee will be pinned to Bush's ass by Howard Dean's DNC. Americans blame nearly every ill on the Republican Party. All top Democratic presidential candidates beat all top Republicans in head-to-head polling. The Democratic nominee will inherit a sophisticated and mature technology-driven infrastructure that will simply pummel the opposition.

That's why we need to refocus our energies and forget about the presidential race. The early primary calendar just doesn't affect that race: it also affects the many Congressional, state, and local races that we really need to start getting involved with right now. And so, the Netroots priorities for 2008 must be, in order:

1. Win a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.


2. Continue building and nurturing the Democratic farm team at the local and state levels.


3. Win a 50-seat advantage in the U.S. House that can ensure a majority for at least a decade.

So with Obama brouhaha today, I was wondering if Al Qaeda was still actually operating terrorist camps out in the open. To my surprise, a quick Google News search revealed that last week, the U.S. pointed out nine locations and the Pakistani military carried out limited airstrikes via helicopter gunships.

These two sources are not Western outlets, so I can't vouch for their credibility. First is the Daily Times:

LAHORE: The US authorities have pointed out the locations of nine alleged terrorist training camps in North Waziristan to Pakistani authorities and an anti-terrorism campaign has been started in the area, Geo news reported on Wednesday.

Quoting its sources, the channel said that Pakistan and the US would act secretly against terrorists in Waziristan. They said that the action against Abdullah Mehsud in Balochistan was part of the "silent operation started under US pressure". The channel reported that US authorities have warned of "dire consequences" if America was attacked by terrorists during this period.

Cross-posted from Leftmost Bit.

The Obama campaign has launched distinct MySpace profiles for each of the early primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Right now, the focus seems to be on maintaining state-specific blogs and providing state-specific media content. The tactic of using MySpace to target primary states echoes what they did with their Facebook application, which asks those who "install" the application to reach out to their friends in those same early primary states.

Interestingly, they also claimed profiles for all 50 states, which is a lesson surely learned from the newsmaking MySpace debacle from April, concerning supporter Joe Anthony and his fan profile which lived at myspace.com/barackobama. I thought the harsh criticism leveled at the Obama campaign from the political blogosphere (particularly TechPresident) was shrill and completely ignorant of how campaigns and field programs need to be run.

But the Obama campaign gets it, and they don't lose sight of the fact that they're a political campaign with a very clear goal. They're using the power of massive social networks to garner on-the-ground volunteer support (which in turn delivers votes) in the places where it actually matters (the early primary states). Many in the campaign are alumni of Dean for America, and so they know how important it is to effectively use online tools to produce offline action, and maybe more importantly, how to execute such programs. I don't know how effective this will be, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of any of the other campaigns.

Hat tip to Mashable.

As a staunch Gore in 2008 supporter, I was ecstatic to get this in my inbox a few hours ago:

A few days ago, AlGore.com started featuring a petition to "Tell Congress to act on global warming". Gore is going to testify at Congressional hearings later in March about the topic, and he wants to bring a stack of petition signatures with him. Innocent enough, right?

Not so fast. Online Organizing 101 tells you to horde as many email addresses as you possibly can (while being legal and ethical about it, of course). There's a real value in terms of future donations and volunteer hours that's tied to each acquired email address. That's why any political organization or campaign worth its salt will always have a simple signup form prominently displayed on its homepage, just begging to be filled. AlGore.com now has that, while they didn't last week.

Both Adam Conner and Matt Stoller have recently blogged about the "1 million strong for Barack" group that's popped up on Facebook. All the talk about reaching over 100,000 members (now at 113K) so quickly reminded me of another Facebook group-building effort a few months ago.

Last October, a student named Brody Ruckus from my alma mater (Georgia Tech) started a group called, I kid you not, "If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend will have a threesome". As Brody explained on the group page, his girlfriend was astonished that several groups over 100,000 members were being created on Facebook (many of them titled something like "The Biggest Facebook group EVAR!"). Brody knew it was easy to do, and he bet his girlfriend that he could do the same. And if he won the bet? Every college guy's dream come true...

Follow me after the jump to find out what happened.