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Institute for Law and Politics Advisory Board Member and YouTube News and Politics Editor Steve Grove gives us a behind-the-scenes video preview of the CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Candidate Debate which will air tomorrow, Wednesday, November 28, at 7:00pm Central on CNN:
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We've mentioned the divide between Democrats and Republicans in the use of campaign technology before.
Earlier this week, the Democratic presidential candidates participated in the first CNN/YouTube debate. Though not perfect, it was broadly seen as a successful melding of the traditional debate format with a new, more engaging, citizen-produced question format. Today the blogosphere is abuzz with news that only two (Ron Paul and John McCain) of the nine Republican presidential candidates have so far agreed to participate in the next CNN/YouTube debate scheduled for September.
From the Washington Post:
"In an interview Wednesday with the New Hampshire Union Leader, Romney said he's not a fan of the CNN/YouTube format. Referring to the video of a snowman asking the Democratic candidates about global warming, Romney quipped, 'I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.'"From the New York Times:
"So, today, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani seemed rather reluctant to attend. A spokeswoman, Katie Levinson, told The Times’s Marc Santora that the campaign had a likely scheduling conflict on that date."I'm happy to grant that some of the videos in the first debate were silly. Most of them, however, were quite earnest. And why can't a debate have a little levity? We certainly don't need more debates like the one where the Republican candidates were given hypothetical scenarios out of "24" and had to tell us how they would be the best candidate to torture a confession out of a terrorist. There's certainly a middle ground - of actually issue discussion - between snowman YouTube videos and Jack Bauer torture scenes, but that doesn't give much of an excuse for the candidates failing to adapt to this new era of political campaign technology.
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YouTube's News and Politics Editor, Steve Grove, joined our Advisory Board today, a week before the first ever YouTube/CNN Democratic Presidential Debate.
Below is video of Steve Grove and CNN's Anderson Cooper announcing the user-submitted debate format, which will premier July 23:
We're excited to have Steve on our Advisory Board as we enter a new technology-driven Presidential campaign. Please join us in welcoming him to the Institute. Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
What could be more ridiculous than Mike Gravel's viral "Rock" video (below)?
How about an animated spoof video of Mike Gravel "outtakes"?
Thanks, CurrentTV, for some needed Monday frivolity! Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
techPresident has an interview with former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel's SecondLife Coordinator. That's right: Mike Gravel has a virtual staffer, charged with maintaining Mr. Gravel's virtual campaign headquarters on SecondLife. The real estate includes a briefing room, conference room and a shrine to the Mike Gravel Presidency, Mount Gravel.
What a fascinating use of campaign resources (even if they're almost certainly volunteers)...
Here are some of the images of the space:
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As a follow-up to a clip we posted last week, below are some video highlights of the Personal Democracy Forum 2007 Conference of a couple weeks ago. The Conference brought together leading strategists, activists, academics and entrepreneurs to discuss the convergence of politics and technology.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman discuss the future of political technology and the role of sites like YouTube on elections:
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The Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) held its annual conference in New York last week.
PdF is dedicated to exploring the emerging fields of technology and politics.
As part of the conference, Republican Utah State Representative Steve Urquhart discussed the importance of bipartisan communication as a moderating force in political technology. Rep. Urquhart is the founder of Politicopia, a bipartisan legislative discussion forum in Utah.
Here's the video: Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Warning: These articles will make little sense unless you consider yourself "tech-savvy".
SEOmoz has a review of Presidential candidate website "Search Engine Optimization" (the set of website traits that make a site more likely to rank high in Google and Yahoo searches - the sign of a well-designed site). Their conclusion: Barack Obama's site is well-designed, John McCain fails almost every rule.
SoloSEO has a similar review. Their rank: The three leading Democrats beat the three leading Republicans in almost every website design and optimization category.
Are Republicans in need of some technology training? Will it have any actual effect on the election?
It seems that John McCain's inability to get his website onto the first page of a Google Search for "John McCain" could be detrimental (especially if it remains true next year) when average General Election voters start wanting to compare candidates. Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Current.tv has a pod about real political campaigns in the virtual reality world of Second Life.
Warning: This is ridiculous, though true: Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Politico has a great article on concerns regarding censorship and free speech rights on sites like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.
As we've noted, more and more of this election is taking place on these sites, but control over their content (despite being "user-generated" the companies owning the sites can still remove whatever they want) raises issues of First Amendment rights.
What do you think? If a candidate needs to be on YouTube to be viable, but Google can remove any content they don't like, does that infringe on their speech rights as candidates? Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Here's an interesting report on how social networking sites are under scrutiny for Homeland Security reasons for their potential use as terrorist recruitment and organizing tools - or potentially as counter-terrorist tools. Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
The Washington Times and the National Journal have different views on the role of political blogs and campaign technology - specifically Web 2.0 (social networking, user-generated content) sites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook - on the upcoming 2008 Presidential election.
The Washington Times column argues that netroots activists have not actually demonstrated much electoral power in contested races. (Think web-savvy Ned Lamont's loss to Joe Lieberman).
A National Journal blog post counters with examples of netroots-supported candidates like Jon Tester and Jim Webb who did win in close races.
The New York Times famously declared 2006 "The YouTube Election."
This year social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace appear to be the leading campaign technologies for shaping the 2008 election.
Last week it was Barack Obama's fiasco managing his MySpace page. Yesterday, the Political Insider detailed his exceptional ability to attract young people as Facebook friends.
Update: The morning, the San Francisco Chronicle has an article on the role of social networking sites on the election.
Yesterday we reported on Barack Obama's ethical lapse in using government resources for campaign purposes.
Today, the Obama campaign is embroiled in a more subtle, but potentially more damaging problem - a fight over who controls a candidate's MySpace page, and how volunteer "netroots" activists should be treated by paid campaign staff - which is all playing out in the blogs and networking sites that Obama has been trying to woo.
The Politico reports on efforts by political bloggers to obtain access to video from presidential debates for blog posting purposes. Seems logical to me. Anyone have a strong counter argument?
Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) reports on the use of a mobile phone text messaging system used in yesterday's presidential election in Nigeria. This appears to be a terrific innovative way to monitor and report on international elections using the ubiquitous technology of cell phones.
In today's law and politics news:
Minnesota:
Trial lawyer Mike Ciresi enters the U.S. Senate race. Michael Brodkorp has some video from the announcement:
ThinkProgress reports on alleged flip-flops by Senator Coleman regarding his role in the appointment of U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.
Nation:
McClatchy reports that the White House is demanding to see RNC emails before they are handed over to the House Judiciary Committee. This is likely to be a battle.
Politico has an interesting commentary on the technology divide between Republicans and Democrats.
Speaking of campaign technology, presidential candidate Duncan Hunter could use some major help with his emails.
And when campaign technology and marketing data collide, we find out that Obama supporters are obsessed with their Blackberrys.
