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Added by Tatum on Jan 19, 2008 - add as a friend | PM me
First, thanks to all of you who have signed up and tried out Political Base. You have sent us great feedback on the site, and we certainly appreciate it.
One of the things we saw we needed early on was a voice. A distinctive voice that would hold both sides accountable. Well, we were lucky enough to convince Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report fame to join us. You can read his welcome post here.
Already Mark has made a major impact on the tone and quality of our editorial and community contributions. He has built an editorial team that will help him carry out his campaign to fix an American political system that is broken. Please join me in welcoming Mark to Political Base.
We'll continue to improve our site and up our coverage, and we're very excited about this election- it's January 19th and still no clear winners! We will continue to add coverage and improve our resources. Please keep sending us your feedback!
Thanks.
The best and the rest around the web this Friday morning.
Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post looks to Argentina's election last Sunday of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, wife of the last Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, to draw analogies to the U.S. elections and the Clintons. Krauthammer says it's not the scandalous side of Bill Clinton that holds Hillary back, rather that "Americans are instinctively republican and suspicious of dynastic politics".
In a New York Times interview from Chicago, Obama says he would develop a new approach for dealing with Iran by engaging in diplomacy. The article stresses Obama's approach, specifically as it separates him from Hillary Clinton's campaign's position on international policy. Immediate reaction from the right of the blogosphere.
Check it out folks: http://www.politicalbase.com/battles/the-power-players-battle/1/battle/#next
We just launched a new quiz called "Battles!". The idea behind it is to pit the political "power players" against each other in comparison, in context of some serious and not-so-serious questions. We'll be launching more of these Battles over time, so please let us know if there are certain sets of people you would like to see in a battle. And any questions too!
You'll notice that after you take the quiz, you can see how everyone is ranking after you battle. We've also created "cards" for people participating in the battles that show up on their homepage. For example, see Fred Thompson's: http://www.politicalbase.com/people/fred-thompson/3613/
You'll notice that he hasn't done so well. If you want to see specifically, check out his battle page: http://www.politicalbase.com/battles/fred-thompson/10/battle-stats
Look forward to hearing what you think of the new feature. Big thank you to Dave and Coonce for getting it done so soon after launch!
Mike Arrington at Techcrunch is setting out to talk to the presidential candidates about the issues concerning the technology industry, starting with Mitt Romney. We're excited that Mike has taken up the flag to get the answers to the issues concerning our industry prior primary season. So that got us thinking... where do the "Internet Barons", some of the technology industry's most powerful, richest, famous, and internet-famous, stand at this point? Out of the 100 folks we consider to be the most talked about in the industry...here's what we found:
- 24 of the Top 100 have contributed to a 2008 Presidential candidate
- The total contributions of these individuals totaled $92,949
- Here's the leaderboard so far:
-
Obama: $36,250
-
McCain: $19,400
-
Hillary: $18,000
-
Romney: $6,900
-
Edwards:$4,299
-
Giuliani: $3,800
-
Biden: $2,300
-
Paul: $2,000
-
Barry Diller has contributed the most at $13,800; with Marc Benioff in 2nd
at $9,200.
-
Diller, Benioff, Ted Leonsis, Marc Andreessen, Vinod Khosla and Jason Fried
all contributed across party lines.
-
Similar to the campaign contributions overall, the Democrats ($60,849) are
receiving more contributions from this group than the Republicans ($32,100)
-
There has been quite a bit made of phenomenon that is the Ron Paul campaign,
and it's disproportionate support from the Internet community . So far, Jason
Fried of 37 Signals and Drew Curtis of Fark are the only ones contributing to
Ron Paul's campaign. However, Fried also gave to Obama and Giuliani, and Curtis
also gave to Obama.
-
For the most part, this groups leans toward the Democrats.
"The Early Adopters"
| Name | Obama | McCain | Clinton | Romney | Edwards | Giuliani | Biden | Paul | Total |
| Barry Diller | $4,600 | $4,600 | $4,600 | $2,300 | $16,100 | ||||
| Marc Benioff | $2,300 | $4,600 | $2,300 | $9,200 | |||||
| Marc Andreessen | $4,600 | $2,300 | $6,900 | ||||||
| Shelby Bonnie** | $4,600 | $2,300 | $6,900 | ||||||
| Ted Leonsis | $2,300 | $2,300 | $2,300 | $6,900 | |||||
| Vinod Khosla | $2,300 | $2,300 | $2,300 | $6,900 | |||||
| Larry Sonsini | $4,600 | $4,600 | |||||||
| Mary Meeker | $1,000 | $2,300 | $1,000 | $4,300 | |||||
| Vin Cerf | $4,200 | $4,200 | |||||||
| Brad Garlinghouse | $1,000 | $3,300 | |||||||
| Chad Hurley | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Chris Alden | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Craig Newmark | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Marissa Mayer | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Mike Moritz | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Peter Levinsohn | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Ram Shriram | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Rupert Murdoch | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Matthew Cohler | $2,300 | $2,300 | |||||||
| Jason Fried | $250 | $500 | $1,000 | $1,750 | |||||
| Drew Curtis | $500 | $1,000 | $1,500 | ||||||
| Scott Kurnit | $1,000 | $1,000 | |||||||
| Seth Godin | $999 | $999 |
** Shelby is the CEO of PoliticalBase
What's more interesting, there is still a lot of money and power on the sideline. There are quite a few experienced contributors who have yet to pick a side. Here's who we see as the next most likely contributors:
"The Next Group Most Likely To Contribute"
| Name | Occupation/ Company | Leans |
| Arianna Huffington | Huffington Post |  |
| Ali Partovi | iLike |  |
| Auren Hoffman | Rapleaf | |
| Ben Trott | Six Apart | |
| Bill Gates | Microsoft |