One of the big questions right now is what will happen to the Obama Movement now that its leadership is shifting from insurgent campaign to governance. Will they try to keep it alive from the WH, from the DNC? Allow it to spin off as an independent organization a la Democracy for America?

That's the question Micah Sifry asked of organizing guru (and my organizing trainer and mentor on the Dean campaign and at the DNC) Marshall Ganz. Many of the field leaders in Obama's organization are Ganz proteges, and they brought him in to lead the Camp Obama trainings attended by 23,000 organizers.

So, while no one knows what will happen yet, Marshall is worth listening to on this front:

BlogAds is running its fifth annual reader survey. We'd really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to answer their questions. Having good demographic data about you allows us to sell the ads that keep TPM online and growing.

Click here and help us out.

We're going to be pushing a fancy Google Map live later today that will stream results back once the poll close on election day.

We're doing all the testing we can (and Google built it and they're pretty good at this), but I was hoping I could convince a few dozen of you to help me out by clicking over to our test site (repeat: test site, the news there is fake/old) and having a look.

Could you do me that favor?  A picture of what it's supposed to look like and some questions after the break.

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As Josh said yesterday, it's clear that the McCain campaign will finish up the race with a Greatest Hits of their racist McCarthyite campaign. Their bet? The media won't fight back with enough force to make calling Obama a Muslim socialist terrorist a net negative.

The media sphere proving them wrong would be a victory not just for the Obama campaign, but for society as a whole and the forces of tolerance and rationality broadly. And some people are making an effort.

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Funny stuff.

Obama after the break...

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I love this from M.J.:

Winning is out of the question for McCain now. He lost all three debates and,in the course of a few months, became something of a joke to most Americans. Pretty amazing for the American hero.

No matter what happens now, he goes down as one of those marginal figures in our political history who was discredited, lost, and disappeared.

On the stage it looked like a President and the Richard Dreyfus character, a gnarly device to make a President look even more Presidential.

In case anyone missed it, we did a TPMtv yesterday on the new community tools.  Hopefully it'll give you a sense of what we think this crazy thing is all about.

Check it out:



Let us know what you think. How's it going out there?

Many of you might not know that in addition to being a network of news blogs, TPM is a community with thousands of members. Anyone who wants to can sign in to have his or her own blog, comment on the posts of other readers or TPM staffers, or recommend favorite posts to others.

Today we're announcing myTPM, an upgrade to the current system and a new set of tools that allow you to customize your community experience and choose your favorite contributors to follow. I explain in today's TPMtv...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

PS: A written explanation of the new tools is here.

It's 4:40 in the morning, so the only possible reason I could be awake is to test TPM brand spanking new community tools. Read more about them here.

Sign in, look around, let us know what you think.  Consider this an open thread.

We're happy to announce that as of right now, we've launched onto a new server set-up and so far so good (cross your fingers for us). This should mean that your comments and blog posts should go up very quickly without any errors or repeats. Let us know it that's what you're seeing.

Coming up next (next two weeks is our plan), new software and new tools.

As promised by Josh early this morning, below the fold is a second preview of the new community tools we'll be launching in about 4 weeks (after we finish our server upgrade and move to the newest version of our blogging software).

The first picture is of the new interface you'll get to use for putting up your posts. The second is of the new layout for each reader blog. The third is of the community dashboard you'll have to keep track of people you think are interesting and people who are responding to you in comment threads.

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This is exactly the crap that drives liberals crazy about the "Very Serious People" over at TNR.  Yes, Rachel Maddow getting her own show is indicative of the trend toward ideological cable news.  But unless Sacha Zimmerman has some plan for ridding the world of Fox News and fundamentally changing the political DNA of our country and its media markets, denying her a show because of this would amount to (continued) liberal unilateral disarmament.

And more importantly, Rachel Maddow, while obviously liberal, is the person on cable least likely to further the actual problems that Zimmerman believes come with this increasing media polarization: "that we are more and more retreating to our comfortable trenches and refusing to acknowledge anything but spite, paranoia, and conspiracy theory when it comes to the other side" and "knee-jerk reactions" passing "for smart commentary."

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We've been sketching out some new features for the site and we need your feedback.

Over the last six months we've listened very closely to your constructive criticism of the site, even if we haven't always been able to address problems as quickly. So the following changes, which we'd like your feedback on, are meant to address what have been the two most persistent complaints -- that the blogging interface is too buggy and that there's little way to follow the discussions you're participating in.

So, the changes are relatively simple. The first is a new approach to reader blogging: a consolidated profile and blogging page and a much improved backend interface for putting up your posts. The second is an interface to allow you to keep track of the discussions you participate in here at TPM and the people you think are making interesting contributions.

Pictures and further explanation after the break.

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So Lila has asked us all here to write a piece about what we're reading this summer. As the former editor 'round these parts, I thought I'd jump in here first to get the ball rolling. Ok, here goes.

Despite running book clubs here for over a year, I'm actually pretty terrible at reading books. There are only so many pages I can read without wanting to click. I suppose it's because Google is making me stupid (or at least making my brain desire more interactive stimulation when it learns), but I usually read three or four books at a time and usually only get through one of those four.

A few days ago, I finally picked up Drew Westen's The Political Brain. It, and a few other books, have me kind of depressed.

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The NYT's rehash of Democrats' "southern problem" is a pretty remarkable accomplishment. 1,300 words on the first African-American nominee's ability to compete in the historic site of slavery and Jim Crow without the words "racism" or "prejudice" or any other phrase that put the trends both current and historic in proper context.

Instead, the "paper of record" chose to whitewash history with polite euphemisms. On why white Southerners left the Democratic Party:

But voters' allegiance was rocked in the 1960s by the Democrats' leadership in passing civil rights legislation, and whites began to move to what Republicans asserted was their more natural ideological home. [emphasis added]

Yes, and that ideology was, um, white supremacy.

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