« You Tubular | Main | Is Fred A Flop? »
July 27, 2007
Who Tube?
Our last posting detailed the first ever You Tube presidential debate, held on Tueday night in South Carolina, where various Americans quizzed the Democratic contenders about a host of issues, and which spawned the first real skirmish of the campaign between frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Republican You Tube debate is scheduled for September 17th in St. Petersburg, FL, and apparently hundreds of questions for the candidates have already been submitted. There's one small problem -- so far only John McCain and Ron Paul have agreed to participate. In fact, Rudy Giuliani's campaign is signaling he won't make it -- what's the matter Rudy, afraid some firefighter might get ya' with a zinger? -- and Mitt Romney's camp sounds non-committal at best.
Is it that the GOP candidates just don't believe the Web matters much as a focus of the campaign (hard to believe at this point), or does the less predictable nature of taking questions from actual citizens (who are a little more difficult for Republican hopefuls to reflexively brand as establishment liberals out to get them) conflict too much with the GOP establishment's control-freak nature?
Either way, blowing the You Tube debate off strikes us as unwise. But then, we thought it was a mistake for the Democratic candidates to torpedo the Fox News Debate (why wouldn't a candidate want a chance to reach every voter possible?), so what do we know?
On a related note, check out former Dean guru and current Edwards strategist Joe Trippi's analysis of Republicans' overall Web disadvantage vis-a-vis the Democrats. Interesting food for thought. (Hat tip to Professors R-Squared for the link.)
Posted by houtopia at July 27, 2007 03:47 PM
Comments
It struck me yesterday when reading another post about the hipness of the Youtube phenom that I didn't watch it because, 1) I find the candidates obnoxious and 2) I find the kind of people who participated on youtube to be even more obnoxious. So, I asked around the office and discovered that no one else had watched the Youtube debate except for one 20 something who found it exciting but probably won't vote. My greatest fear about this election has always been that it will provoke a constitutional crisis complete with blood in the streets. Regardless of whether that happens or not, I think one of the primary results of this election will be to lay bare to the nation and the world how irrevocably divided this country and it's society is and the extent to which so many "Americans" harbor true loathing for their fellow U.S. residents.
Posted by: Tony at August 1, 2007 12:09 PM
"taking questions from actual citizens"
Yeah, but the questions were chosen and asked by "certain" people to ask the candidates. That's why there wasn't one question asked about the border or illegal immigration. It's no different than the old way. The question forum and subject matter are manipulated.
"hundreds of questions for the candidates have already been submitted"
Posted by: Joe at August 1, 2007 12:18 PM
Tony -- interesting, and I would tend to agree with you, but the stat I heard was that 2.6 million people watched the debate -- a much higher number than I would have guessed. The jury's still out on the relevance of it.
Joe -- I suspect the reason you didn't see a question about immigration/border security is because survey data shows that very few Democratic primary voters rate it as an important issue. By contrast, about one-third of GOP primary voters rate it very important, so I will be very surprised if it doesn't come up in the Republican You Tube debate (if it happens) in September.
Posted by: houtopia at August 1, 2007 07:16 PM