All Things Digital

So, as is BoomTown’s patriotic duty, I was watching the returns come in from Pennsylvania in the draggy war that has become the quest for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as I also pondered what would happen next in the even draggier Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle.

Then a smart friend in the industry wrote me an email, stating the obvious:

This msft/yahoo deal reminds me of the democratic nomination. we all know how it’s going to end but it’s going to be nasty nasty nasty all the way till the end, with enough bitterness generated along the way to present a reasonably likelihood of a pyrrhic victory. the ultimate loser can only succeed in doing well enough to drag out the process and inflict more pain.”

My friend wins the pundit prize.

And, in other words, the only winners in both these ugly contests are obvious: Republican candidate Sen. John McCain and Google (GOOG).

Which are, ironically, the pair both other pairs should actually be most focused on defeating.

Here’s the latest “Obama Girl” video from the folks at Barely Political, in which our-lady-of-obsession takes aim at Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential candidate rival Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In it, she urges Clinton to stop being so mean to Obama and also to step down from the race in a kind of tsk-tsk style. There is some awkward digital hugging.

Unfortunately, it is meaner to Clinton than it should be. Unlike the first, the new video is a little over the top in not such a clever way and seems more sour rather than just sweetly goofy.

Could it be that even Obama Girl has become jaded by the political process? It’s an Obamanation!

Here’s the video:

As you can see from this video, BoomTown should stick to poking at Yahoo’s business plans, rather than talking to its very sharp Sarah Lacy of Yahoo Finance’s new Tech Ticker site.

Some material from AllThingsD appears on Tech Ticker from time to time, linking back to our site. And BoomTown was invited to talk about various topics last week with Lacy, including in this post and video about politics in Silicon Valley.

In the piece, Lacy and I discuss the candidates, as well as issues like ubiquitous broadband access (a critical issue about which I have long maintained the federal government has dropped the ball on spearheading the development of, as it has in the past with other important issues such as the universal telephone service or the federal highway system).

While I am not “longing” for former Vice President Al Gore, as the Tech Ticker post noted, it is still true that he is the most techie of any politician in recent memory.

I Obamapolize, but it’s true! (I also Obamapologize for my weird hair and lack of makeup, but I never appear on camera in BoomTown, so I am not going to when visiting Sunnyvale, Calif.)

Also below it is the hour-plus interview Walt Mossberg and I did with Sen. John McCain last May at our fifth D: All Things Digital conference, at a time when he was considered the longest of long shots for the Republican presidential nomination.

So much for predictions!

Why I do I love the Internet? Because one online video can encapsulate and send up all the political noise instantly, that’s why.

So as you vote (and whoever you prefer, most definitely get out and vote), try to remember that it is all about ch-ch-ch-ch-changes:

Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer suggestions about stuff to watch.

Sure, James Kotecki is no Jon Stewart and is a bit goofy in an endearing preppy style as announcer.

But his short video recaps of politics with a touch of sweet snark for the Web site Politico.com (based on Mike Allen’s online column) is well done and even helpful.

Here’s the most recent one:

How far ahead of the political curve is our D: All Things Digital conference?

So far that we put all those bendy-straws-in-the-wind television pundits to shame!

Case in point: At D4, we invited former Vice President Al Gore to come just before everyone decided he was the best thing since organic whole-wheat sliced bread.

And at D5, held last May, we invited Sen. John McCain of Arizona to talk about things like tech policy and Iraq, during a time when most had written him off in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Not so, it seems, after Comeback Jack’s big win in New Hampshire last night.

Given our powerful psychic political skills, we are keeping our next political selection sealed in a mayo jar in the back of ATD HQ.

But to see what McCain is all about, here’s an hour-plus interview with McCain by Walt Mossberg and me:

The influence of the blogosphere and online sites in politics, which was writ large in the last presidential election, will come as no surprise in the upcoming one.

Today, The Wall Street Journal’s Amy Schatz looks at the impact of bloggers for a site called Blue Hampshire.

The influential site in the New Hampshire primary only gets about 800 readers a day, but second-tier candidates in the race are paying a lot of attention to it.

The reason? They seek to influence any possible influencer, even those who never would have gotten on the bus in campaigns past.

While much has been written about the impact of the online space on politics, aside from an interesting way of fund raising, the last election was not swayed by the Web in the kind of significant way that seems inevitable, even though a vast trove of political information moved online, a spate of influential political bloggers grew prominent and pols used the Internet for organizing purposes.

It will be interesting, though, what the rise of social networks–which has only happened in the last two years in a major shift–will mean to the mix going forward.

As people become more and more comfortable with high degrees of interactivity and the social graphs being created by Facebook and MySpace (which is doing a ton of political programming) become more integral, one wonders if politics–which is still largely a time-and-place analog experience–will shift too, well beyond Barack Obama’s MySpace page.

I like this piece on Gigaom.com by Kevin Kelleher, mostly because he uses the phrase “bat-shit insanity” to describe the $6 billion Microsoft is paying to acquire aQuantive (which I wrote about here) and compares the software giant to an aging movie star in this tasty way:

So aQuantive as an investment is kind of like John Travolta’s career: It really all depends on when you catch him. Are you getting the epoch-defining ‘Saturday Night Fever’ or its unpalatable sequel ‘Staying Alive’? ‘Pulp Fiction’ or ‘Michael’?

Just Microsoft’s luck, Travolta is about to headline the new ‘Hairspray’ in drag.”

Was it just me, or did a vision of Steve Ballmer in drag just pop into your head?

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