TV ads

• MTV is finally running its first paid political ad - and it's an attack on Senator Obama run by a third party organization. Classy. In a conversation I had with an MTV rep, they said that third party ads would be reviewed and accepted on a case by case basis. If newfangled swiftboaters can get their ads placed, I assume MoveOn or other progressives will have no trouble getting their own ads on TV, right?
• EJ Dione at The Washington Post pens the Best. Op-Ed. Ever. on the youth vote by a professional political pundit.
• McCain is getting ready to roll out new social networking features on his website to attract young voters. Because McCainspace was such a smashing success last year, right? I think Bondelli has the right take on building new social networks, but I've got no problem with McCain competing with the College Republicans to see whose social network can suck worse. Divide that tiny potential audience up and doom them both to failure.
• Jason at the Sentinel posted slides from his two excellent Netroots Nations panels on how to monetize, popularize, and all around make your blog more kickass.
• MSNBC has an interesting story about the role that nonprofits play in our elections. If you want to know about the differences between 501c 3, c4, and 527 organizations, it's not a bad place to start, even if there are some questionable assumptions about issue advocacy and ideology in the piece.
• Youth to Power made Micah Sifry and Andrew Raseij's "political beach-reading list."
• Facebook has plans to take over the rest of the interwebs . . .
• Over at his other blog, Kevin reports that Kanye West and MTV are teaming up to welcome home veterans and shed more light on the situation of our soldiers as they return home.

Update: Also, one more quick thought. At the end of the day, isn't it setting the bar a little low to ask that people just vote? If your end goal is Civic Participation - which is the express intention of these ads - isn't involvement in a political party or in some form of political activism the real end goal?

I appreciate that folks want to be nonpartisan, or that the particular tax model they've chosen makes ads like these possible, but there is a trade-off with effectiveness that I'm not sure is worth it.
--------------------
So The Ad Council is running a series of new ads in support of that great inherent good, Civic Participation. They are lame.

Vote to get good Karma? How about vote because there are serious issues at stake that impact your life on a daily basis. Voting because it is an inherent good just isn't a compelling sell to someone who isn't already heading to the voting booth on election day.

As a nonprofit, these ads are probably produced pro-bono by fancy Madison Ave ad agencies, but that's an expensive in-kind donation. And they still cost millions to run on TV. I would hope that the folks who support the work of the Ad Council have statistics showing that these types of ads actually do increase turnout and other forms of civic participation, but I can't help but think that money could be better spent.

If you haven't seen it yet, Bill Richardson is running some damn creative ads. The kind that could jar you out of your apathy and get you looking at his website. This is the type of thing candidates need to do if they want to get noticed on YouTube beyond highlighting the latest gaffe by their opponent. It's an open, creative marketplace, and stale campaign commercials won't cut it.

John Edwards is running some creative ads of his own, which remix voter-generated content. The effect is a somewhat jarring (in a bad way). I tend to think he shouldn't mix the slick ad content with the amatuer content. They should live separately. Nevertheless, it's a really interesting concept that I hope they keep refining. They only got 84 submissions for this first run, and quality of the final product will probably go up as more people submit entries.

What do y'all think? Would these get you excited about a candidate or motivated to do something?

First, check out YouTube on YouTube's role in politics:

Then, check out two more quick links:

• With the primaries rapidly approaching, and student loan scandals spilling out of control, I thought I'd bring back this little nugget of policy information: the highest amount of student debt per capita can be found in Iowa and New Hampshire (pdf).

  • The average debt for all four-year college graduates (a weighted average
    combining both public and private non-profit institutions) ranges from a high of
    $22,793 in New Hampshire to a low of $11,709 in Utah.
  • Statewide average debt for seniors graduating from public universities ranges
    from $23,198 in Iowa to $11,067 in Utah.
  • At private, non-profit universities, statewide averages range much higher, from
    $32,504 in Arizona down to $13,309 in Utah.

  Which Presidential candidates can make hay out of that? Does it matter, or is policy irrelevant in the Democratic Primary?