While Hillary Clinton tries to pry superdelegates away from Barack Obama, another presidential candidate, Mike Gravel, is trying to steal Obama’s Girl.

Yes, Gravel is still officially in the race. If you’ve forgotten, he’s the former U.S. Senator from Alaska — a Democrat who recently turned Libertarian. He produced some quirky videos early in the campaign, and now he’s featured in a new one, alongside Obama Girl. As an added bonus, he “totally learned” and performs the Soulja Boy dance.

Here’s Gravel’s website: http://www.gravel2008.us/

And here’s that offbeat Rock video:

Here are some of the sharpest exchanges between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton at last night’s debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Here’s Clinton and Obama arguing over Obama’s remarks about Ronald Reagan and Republican ideas, and Clinton raising Obama’s support from a landlord who has since been charged with fraud and other alleged crimes…

Here’s Clinton hitting Obama for voting “present” so often as an Illinois legislator.

And here, for a little comic relief, is Obama responding to the question of whether Bill Clinton was “the first black president.”

What do you think of their clash?

Just a few months ago, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee shared the anonymity of the handful of other back-of-the-pack Republican presidential candidates. In recent weeks, he’s registered a stunning climb in the polls.

Mike Huckabee

And after Wednesday night’s You Tube/CNN debate, he’s bound to get another huge boost — perhaps enough to propel him to victory in Iowa.

He had what appears, at least in the immediate aftermath, to have been a breakthrough performance. He was articulate, funny, homespun and perhaps more than any other candidate he exuded a confidence and sense of comfort in who he is and what he believes. (John McCain and Fred Thompson came close behind.)

Perhaps Huckabee struggled a bit to explain his support for scholarships for children of illegal aliens. But after that he scored on virtually every question. He was direct and unapologetic and registered high on the likeability scale.

Mitt Romney may have fared the worst. He’s already suspect among many Republicans for his evolution on key issues. And his performance could not have helped any in allaying those concerns. He stumbled, stammered and didn’t seem to know what he believed on some key issues, and at times his first instinct seemed to be to duck and weave.

Some other observations:

I’ll take the citizen-submitted video format and Anderson Cooper over Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert any day.

Even so, while the questions were generally good, this batch of videos wasn’t as creative or surprising as the batch used in the Democratic debate.

I was surprised they didn’t use Minnesota’s Billiam the Snowman, given that this debate almost didn’t happen because of opposition to Billiam.

I was disappointed that they didn’t use a Red State Update video question, as they did in the Democratic debate. Those guys are hilarious. To see their work, go to their website here.

But this video, I thought, did stand out.

So what did you think of the debate? Do you think Huckabee will get the biggest bounce? And what did you think of Thompson submitting an attack ad for his own video? What else caught your attention?

If you can’t be in Iowa, here’s the next best thing — a number of videos that give you a flavor of the campaign as it starts the homestretch run to the Jan. 3 caucuses.

This Obama campaign video shows what activists actually do — in this case, preparing for the Harkin Steak Fry, where Obama was speaking. There’s drums, cheerleaders — and everyone is “fired up, ready to go.”

In debates, John Edwards talks about the fundamentally corrupt system in Washington. That’s the subject of this speech, but it’s delivered with the kind of passion that’s hard to convey during a debate, when you’re standing behind a podium and Wolf Blizter is shouting at you: “Yes or no.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign had some egg on its face recently, when it was disclosed that a campaign staffer planted a question — during a Clinton appearance — with an all-too-willing college student. I can’t embed the video here, but here are a couple of links to CNN videos. First, here’s the question and Clinton’s answer. And here’s an interview with the Grinnell College student who explains how it all happened.

This video of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee isn’t quite as lively and exciting as the Obama video. But just because his supporters aren’t marching and shouting, it doesn’t mean they’re any less enthusiastic and committed to their candidate. It’s people like Bob Anderson who are behind the recent Huckabee surge in Iowa.

Here’s Rudy Giuliani (”the only Republican with an office east of Des Moines”) speaking at the University of Iowa.

Rep. Tom Tancredo last week started running a hard-edged new ad about immigration and terrorism. As he explains at the start, “I’m Tom Tancredo, and I approved this message because someone needs to say it.”

And, for old time’s sake, here’s The Scream — Howard Dean’s overly enthusiastic speech to supporters after his third-place finish in Iowa in 2004.

The controversy over open political spying Minnesota, which I wrote about yesterday, is not the first flare-up over “trackers” this campaign season.

An even more heated clash occurred in Maine in August, when Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ staff asked the Democratic challenger to get the party to stop tracking her, because her tracker was being intrusive.

Sen. Susan Collins and her “tracker”

That case is especially illuminating because there are photos or video taken by both camps, showing the Democratic tracker at work.

First, here is the Portland newspaper’s account of how the controversy started. And here is the Bangor Daily News story.

Collins’ director of Internet strategy posted pictures of the tracker stalking Collins at a parade — standing a respectful distance at one point, but intruding into the parade and into Collins’ space in others.

Here on YouTube is the Collins’ campaign’s video of the tracker videotaping her. It’s clear that he’s walking between her and the parade-watchers.

And here is the actual video that the Democratic tracker shot, titled “Susan Collins greets her tracker.” MaineDems posted that long version and they posted a short version here.

You can see that Collins doesn’t seem to be bothered. She asks him to be sure to get her good side and says to him, in a friendly way:

“So are you my tracker, Rick?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ok, well I’ll be seeing you on the campaign trail.”

But Collins’ chief of staff, Steve Abbott, argued that the tracker invaded the privacy of regular citizens who talked with Collins and recorded her from an unacceptably close range. It’s one thing to record her speech, but this tracker crossed the line, Abbott said.

The publisher of a number of area newspapers disagreed. It said in an editorial that Collins’ protestations of being recorded in public “comes from someone who supported the Patriot Act with the attitude, ‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, it shouldn’t bother you.’”

Does this behavior bother you, or is it fair game, protected by the First Amendment? Where do you draw the line in conducting opposition research on rival candidates?

Al Franken had some good news to report Thursday. So how did he get the word out?

YouTube.

Al Franken

We’ve seen politicians routinely announce their candidacies on YouTube, instead of at a speech/press conference on the lawn in front of their humble childhood home. We’ve seen them use YouTube to tap into popular culture, as Hillary Rodham Clinton did with her search for a campaign theme song. And we’ve seen Mike Gravel take this rock and toss — well, you tell me what that one’s about. Whatever it is, it’s here.

And now they’re using YouTube to make news, as Franken did by announcing his third-quarter fundraising totals, which exceeded Sen. Norm Coleman’s collections. As the Franken campaign announced on its website: “We released our numbers a little differently this time around — check out our Q3 video to see how well Al did…” Franken’s video is here. And our Washington correspondent Kevin Diaz’s story is here.

So it’s time to take a quick accounting of how the 2008 U.S. Senate candidates are doing on YouTube by looking at the activity on their channels. (Note: Spellings are as their channels appear on YouTube. Numbers are as of 6 p.m. Thursday.)

ciresiforsenate
Joined: May 2007
Last time logged in: 1 month ago
Videos posted: 32
Most viewed video: 494 views
Subscribers to his channel: 7
Channel views: 562
His channel is here.

ColemanforSenate
Joined: April 2007
Last time logged in: 3 weeks ago
Videos posted: 4
Most viewed video: 494 views (Yes, the exact same number as Ciresi.)
Subscribers to his channel: 19
Channel views: 913
His channel is here.

FrankenForSenate
Joined: February 2007
Last time logged in: Thursday morning
Videos posted: 16
Most viewed video: 164,360 views
Subscribers to his channel: 544
Channel views: 7,432
His channel is here.

Two other candidates, Democrats Jim Cohen and Dick Franson don’t have YouTube channels.

How do you rate the candidates in their use of YouTube? Aside from the numbers, which candidate has the best videos? Which of their videos are your favorites?