1. NSA Verizon. (New!)  Surveillance is the most serious of these scandals, according to Rasmussen polls, which gives this one the edge.
2. IRS. (Last week: 2) There hasn’t been much new news this week, but Americans still care.
3. NSA PRISM. (Last week: 1) Edward Snowden pushes this lower on the list, as does the fact that many reasonable Americans feel like spying on foreigners is an acceptable counter-terrorism measure.
4. Benghazi.  (Last week: 4)  Americans may not care as much about it, but they do think that there was a cover up surrounding the events in Benghazi.  Worse, they believe the cover up was politically motivated.
5. DOJ. (Last week: 3)  The Rasmussen poll linked above shows that Americans find this among the least serious scandals, but bet on ongoing media coverage.

Facebook now allows users to include clickable hashtags in their posts.  The decision seems Twitter-inspired, right?

Sort of, but not completely. Though they are using the tags made popular by Twitter, Facebook’s new feature has just as much to do with an old media dinosaur - namely, live television:

During primetime television alone, there are between 88 and 100 million Americans engaged on Facebook – roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night. The recent “Red Wedding” episode of Game of Thrones, received over 1.5 million mentions on Facebook, representing a significant portion of the 5.2 million people who watched the show. And this year’s Oscars buzz reached an all-time high on Facebook with over 66.5 million interactions, including likes, comments, and posts.

Speaking of the Big Game, recall that Super Bowl Sunday was a big night for Twitter this year - half of the commercials mentioned Twitter in one way or another.  Watch almost any live programming and you’ll catch hashtags superimposed on the screen almost as ubiquitously as the logo of the channel you’re watching.  All this takes advantage of multi-screen media consumption - the fact that audiences usually mess around on their phones and tablets while zoning out in front of the warming glow of TV.

And if you’re a show, product, or even a politician in a debate you want to own both of those screens.  Facebook wants to be a gateway to the buzz – and the sweet, sweet marketing dollars that follow it.

(Via AllFacebook.)

“There’s a big difference in this race,” Biden said, according to the pool report. “Barack Obama’s not at the head of the ticket. And that means those legions of African Americans and Latinos are not automatically going to come out. No one has energized them like Barack Obama. But he’s not on the ticket. So don’t take this one for granted.”

Leaving aside for a moment the unintentional racism of assuming minority groups vote as a bloc for members of other minority groups, Biden is right on one point: much of the Democrats’ success over the previous six years came in large part due to voters excited about President Obama himself.   Yes, the 2012 campaign team made unprecedented use of data to identify supporters, but they did so in the name of an exciting candidate.

Edward Markey doesn’t excite people they way Obama does.  Joe Manchin, Max Baucus, and Tim Johnson probably wouldn’t, either, which is a big reason they aren’t running for re-election in 2014.  Corey Booker might, but outside of him or a similar candidate rising through the ranks, the Democrats won’t have candidates who can duplicate Obama’s success.

That’s not an indictment of the Democrats yet – politicians like Obama don’t come around all that often, and the Republican ranks only have a few political rock stars of their own.  But it will become an indictment if Democrats feel like Obama will carry them to victory again in 2014 and 2016.

Before booking Eric Snowden Day and throwing a parade, though, it’s worth waiting to see what else is out there about him, or at least what he says next.  When a story seems to come straight out of Hollywood, sometimes it proves too good to be true.

1. NSA targets everybody. (New!)  The President’s explanation that the concept of domestic is critical for national security makes the assumption that America looks at him the way they looked at his predecessor in 2003.  Claiming that broad oversight powers are necessary doesn’t sound so good after the public has spent weeks of hearing about flouting First Amendment rights, picking on political opponents with the IRS, and inconsistent stories about the attack in Benghazi.  Further, the wording of the President’s response – that there must be a choice between rights and safety – won’t help allay the public’s fears.
2. IRS targets the Tea Party.  (Last week: 4)  The good news for the IRS?  The expensive and idiotic videos, coupled with news about the opulent conferences, give credence to the Administration’s claim that the IRS is not malicious, just incompetent.
3. DOJ targets the Press.  (Last week: 1)  Senator Joe Manchin suggested that Eric Holder ought to think about resigning.  That someone in his own party would even bring this up demonstrates the bipartisan misgivings about seizing phone records from reporters.
4. State Department targets the truth about Benghazi.  (Last week: 3)  Hillary Clinton’s approval ratings are sinking.  What difference, at this point, does that make?  It’s evidence that the American public is highly skeptical of the Administration.
5. Obamacare targets American wallets.  (Last week: 2)  Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said this week that the Obamacare-induced hikes in insurance rates actually represent reductions in cost.  Yes, she did actually say that.

Wild Card: GOP targets Facebook.  The hiring of new CTO Andy Barkett from Facebook means the RNC may actually have the tools to start organizing around some of these scandals.

1. Department of Justice vs. the First Amendment.  (Last week: 3)  Eric Holder is not so lucky as his boss: 42% of Americans think he ought to pack up and leave.  After word surfaced that the DOJ zeroed in on Fox News’s James Rosen, Holder flirted with perjury charges.  His ham-fisted attempt at reconciling with the fourth estate and demonstrating transparency was an off the record meeting, because nothing says “I love free speech” better than “Shh!”  Sidebar: It would have been hilarious if some press outlet had gone and then reported on the events verbatim.  Most of the media opted for the high road (stop laughing) and opted not to go.
2. Entitlements.  (NEW!) Call this a dark horse.  Social Security isn’t doing well, and neither is Medicare.  California health insurance premiums are rising due to Obamacare.  This represents a huge messaging opportunity for the GOP.
3. Benghazi.  (Last week: 2)  The drumbeat of bad news is starting to take its toll on Hilary Clinton.  She’s not a particularly scary or formidable figure in 2014 or 2016, but if you’re scoring at home that’s the second current or former member of Obama’s cabinet that the American people have soured on.
4. The IRS vs. the Tea Party, et al. (Last week: 1)  There are so many pieces of bad news that inevitably, one of the big scandals fades to the background in any given week.  This one would have dropped off, but for another “dark horse” wrinkle – that the agency may have targeted adoptive families and small businesses unfairly.  This development would move the IRS’s actions from the realm of patently unfair to heavy-handed and just plain mean.
5. Campaign developments.  (NEW!) left-wing SuperPACs must have been salivating to use Michele Bachmann as the poster child for the Republican candidate class of 2014; when she bowed out of her race her Democrat challenger did as well.  Ed Markey in Massachusetts is sinking into a dead heat with Gabriel Gomez.  In New Mexico, Susana Martinez well-positioned against potential challengers.  Bad campaign news tends to snowball, and that portends a big chilling effect on the Presidential agenda.

She was a bomb thrower, a master performer, a flashy politician with an appetite for combat and perhaps the strongest TV presence of any Republican in Washington. 

Maybe they were watching a different Congresswoman.  A “flashy politician” usually doesn’t confuse John Wayne with a serial killer.  Google “strong TV presence” and you won’t find media training classes based around looking off into space when receiving the gift of national media coverage.

Bachmann was not a model of the modern politician.  She lost.  Her messaging was incendiary enough for mainstream media attention but devoid of ideas – so while some folks on the right went along for a short ride based on the mainstream media’s shock and vitriol, Bachmann couldn’t carry a movement.  Her staff churned throughout the years.  The allegations that still hang around her campaigns reek more of absolute disorganization than intentional malfeasance; Team Bachmann doesn’t seem smart and organized enough to be corrupt.

She was a mess, but never a serious force.  She fed media coverage for a short time, but had no substance.    The heirs to her attention-craving throne (from the left or the right) will flame out quickly, too.

Michele Bachmann was, succinctly, the political equivalent of the girl you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party:

Anecdotally, there are many reasons that theorem makes sense.  With DVR culture firmly entrenched, TV commercials have become almost universally fast-forward-throughable with the exception of news, and sports, and Wheel of Fortune.  Online video viewership is skyrocketing.

On the other hand, there are reasons why an ad executive would want to trend more toward online video ads.  Online videos have a higher likelihood of going viral and creating positive buzz so that the ad execs can use empty phrases like “go viral” and “create buzz.”  Viewership is easily measured, giving agencies something to report to the client.  And if they flop no one notices.  A bad Superbowl commercial gets a hundred million hands hitting a hundred million foreheads, but a bad online video can drift to oblivion (unless it’s REALLY bad).

It also sounds really good to say that online video is the wave of the future.  There’s nothing to back up whether online video advertising actually drives sales more or less; but an agency exec who suggests skepticism will sound like a dinosaur.

This isn’t to say online video isn’t a great medium for message delivery.  I think it’s probably the best, and that’s my opinion.  This study asks marketing executives, and it was done by an outfit called EMarketer.com.  It’s not exactly unbiased.

While this is a speed bump for the GOP, it really measures failure of the conservative movement.  The constellation of groups churning out candidates and activists has not done a good enough job preparing them to appeal to non-conservatives.  The most effective leaders are those who can talk to the middle from the edge – it’s what makes President Obama such a great politician.  Going a step further: There’s no such thing as “too conservative to win” (or “too liberal to win”) a general election.  There’s such a thing as “too crazy to win,” and there’s definitely such a thing as “too stupid to win.”

If fewer people self-identify as “conservative,” then Republican politicians will have to stop using it as a buzzword.  That’s a smart thing to do, anyway.  Then it’s up to the conservative movement to articulate policy positions in a way that sounds reasonable to non-conservatives.

It would be more illuminating to see the specifics.  For instance, Gallup says that Americans remain suspect of government; the IRS suffering a predictable and precipitous dip.  Those are both “economic conservative” positions, but that doesn’t mean the respondents would self-identify as such.  And that could fuel exactly the type of issue-specific messaging that conservatives and Republicans can use to expand their influence – even if they don’t expand their brand.