Posted on 02/11/2008 10:28:25 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Welcome to the 2008 general election, YouTube style.
No sooner had the polls closed at the end of Super Tuesday, when a video popped up on YouTube attacking newly christened GOP front-runner John McCain where he's most vulnerable: his support for the Iraq war.
The 83-second advertisement shows a consumer gamely struggling on the phone with a friendly but unhelpful service representative. It turns out to be the United States government on the line, which informs the befuddled citizen that she has no choice but to pay a hefty monthly recurring charge for the war.
"In the past couple of weeks, when it seemed like McCain may in fact be the nominee, we thought that the message should be that the deaths in Iraq may not be on the front page anymore, but the money is still coming out of your pocket," says the spot's creator, Robert Greenwald, a progressive activist and documentary filmmaker in Los Angeles. "I felt strongly that it was a story that wasn't being told, and a story that couldn't be argued against."
Decisive moments in primaries have always triggered torrents of fresh money into campaign coffers, which eventually translate into television ads. But in this most wired of campaign seasons, a new type of Web 2.0-enhanced nonprofit advocacy group is streamlining the process like never before, producing and distributing slick, effective videos in internet time.
Thanks to converging developments in campaign finance law, the improving technology of digital cameras and the rise of online social networking, voters' inboxes this election season will be filled at strategic moments with forwarded web addresses for issue-oriented ads like Less Jobs, More War from Greenwald's Brave New Films.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com:80 ...
It’s not hard to dump on McCain. The progressive societal changes in information availability and transmission will make this a rough election.
Let me be the first of many, many people to point out how McCain royally screwed himself with McCain-Feingold. Especially since the left is preparing to ignore it.
I just wish we could find a way around McCain.
The Dems are going to have an absolute field day running against McCain. Absent a terror attack here, I don’t see any way he beats Obama and even Clinton would be very tough.
You know I have no tug within me to defend McCain....
Yeah, but McCain is really really going to fix boxing.
This guy’s fixes are worse than what they were designed to fix.
btt
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