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Faith, Politics and Cup of Joe

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Welcome back to On The Download, your almost-daily dispatch on politechs: Politics, Multimedia and the Internet. Hotline subscribers: Check out our archives.

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*Joe Lieberman's new Web site went up last night with yes -- a blog. The campaign confirmed they hired Liberty Concepts to do its web work for them. The firm does internet for Jim Pederson's campaign and worked on an older, now-defunct version of Ben Cardin's Senate campaign site.

Lieberman's Web site went down on Primary Day, August 8th, and had not shown more than a splash page until last night. MediaPost reported in late August that two Democratic firms had turned down Lieberman's inquiries, namely Plus3 and Blue State Digital.

*Christian Democrats are no longer losing their religion. Instead, they're trying to find it online. Internet Christian Community FaithfulDemocrats.com went live yesterday with the goal of re-energizing religious progressives. The site features left-leaning leaders discussing and blogging on faith and public policy. There's an action center to direct volunteers and donors to campaigns, provide talking points and a campaign blog.

Amy Sullivan, an analyst on religion and politics who contributes to the site's campaign blog, said the goal is highlight relgious efforts by Democrats in state campaigns, such as reaching out to Catholic voters. "Because the national party now understands it needs to reach out to religious voters, but it doesn't have a clue how to do it and hasn't invested any resources at all in doing that," Sullivan said. "But the state parties are way ahead."

The first featured politico is Pennsylvania Senate candidate Bob Casey, with the following candidates ready and waiting for faithful fundraising: Ted Strickland, Harold Ford, Claire McCaskill, John Spratt, Kathleen Sebelius and Heath Shuler. Ex-DNC chair David Wilhelm and Chicago-based Executive Director Jesse Lava conceived the site, which has received 50,000 unique hits so far. Other participants include Sens. Tim Johnson, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Reps. Rosa DeLauro, James Clyburn and Gov. Tim Kaine, with Paul Begala, Bill Press, Minyon Moore, Mara Vanderslice, Mike McCurry, Cynthia Rotunno, and Wilhelm on the strategy team.

A Few More Bytes:
*Phil Angelides re-vamped his Web site with a new blog, "Voices of California."
*See Dick DeVos Run for Michigan Governor, curtesy of the state's Democratic party and produced by Joe Slade White.
*Sen. Jim Talent has a video version up of his Missouri Values Tour.
*Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele shares screen time with Rudy Giuliani, while MD Dems are up with The Real Steele.
*Gov. Rod Blagojevich is celebrating Labor Day.
*Wondered if former CNN achnor Judy Woodruff was outside potlics? She's not. Instead, she's collecting video and text questions to ask Sen. John McCain.
*The NRCC points out that if you google "Nick Lampson," his old congressional district, TX-02, comes up in the description of his campaign Web site.
*So you missed the NOI conference last week? Check out PoliticsTV.com's briefing from conference speakers on motivating the online "Super Volunteer."
*DNC released a new podcast: An interview with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones on Hurricane Katrina.

4 Comments

Did you all see that the DLC endorsed Union Card Check in their e-mail today?

Sen. Lieberman's new ad is officially the worst political advertisement I have ever seen...

Um, Joe2006.com is live? I'm still seeing this:

Welcome to Joe2006.com! We'll be re-launching our full website soon to bring you the latest news and updates from the campaign.

kari, you need to clear your cache...