The YouTube Campaign

I just read that most of the Republicans have not decided whether to attend the YouTube debate in September. My recommendation is they swallow hard and attend.

When historians look back at the 2008 election I think they will call it the YouTube election. This is just July, 2007, and so far we have seen outstanding non-campaign sponsored videos promoting candidates. Remember the viral video painting Clinton as Big Sister? How about Obama girl?

Now we see this week's disagreement between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama played out not just in the newspapers, blogs and on cable, but also on YouTube.

Here is a video I picked up at the Daily Kos cross posted there from MyDD.

Things you should know about this video. First, I found it so, it seems to be traveling around the internet. Second, it is not claimed by the Obama campaign. It was posted on YouTube by someone named Lovingj1. The poster claims he is a 29 year old man named Jonathan who is "a huge supporter of Barack Obama." He says he wants to do everything to get Obama elected. Third, the video is pretty high quality and reasonably powerful.



The next video is not so well made. In fact, it's production values are down right crude. It was posted by somebody named wyattmcintyre. This is not so much a pro-Obama video as an anti-Hillary video. The anti-Hillary message is unfair, but does reflect what we have all heard about her on the street. Hillary has a position for every pot. YouTube seems to enable people to talk back to the images they see on television. Maybe that is what this election is going to be all about. When the television starts talking back to you, it is probably not a good time to be a broadcast journalist or a professional talking head.



In the interest of fairness, I am looking for pro-Clinton viral videos. If you have one, please email the link. Unless it is offensive, I promise to post it.