It seems like everyone has weighed in on the anti-Hillary 1984 video except for Hillary Clinton. Now she's jumped in the fray, emphasizing the positive in a Tuesday interview with the local news channel NY1:
"I think anything that drives interest in these campaigns and get people who otherwise are not at all interested in politics, I think that's pretty good... I might quibble a little bit about the content, but if we get more people, especially young people, thinking about politics, I'm happy about that."
That's a far cry from the Clinton Campaign's defensive reactions to criticism from David Geffen or John Edwards. Hillary deserves credit for looking past the horserace to celebrate the promise of Internet politics: meaningful participation, democratization ("more people") and inclusion ("reaching people who otherwise are not at all interested in politics").
The Clinton Campaign may also be warming up to Internet activism because their supporters are now striking back online. A new video called "Barack 1984" projects Obama on the Big Brother screen, flush with confidence yet poised to lose, just like his favorite football team. The ad ends with the warning, "The Bears Lost So Will Obama." Riding the buzz, it is Tuesday's most viewed video in YouTube's "News and Politics" section, and the 8th most popular YouTube video overall. By reversing the premise of the Hillary spoof, the video provides what columnist Joe Klein imagined on Monday: "I could put together a reel of Obama sound bites that sounds every bit as trite as Hillary in this guerrilla mashup. But I wouldn't have the skills or sensibility to do it this way; very few in my generation would."
And that's the whole point: Our political discourse is no longer limited by a given columnist's skill-set.
Voter-generated content adds new voices, perspectives and ideas to our politics, (as I explained in this MSNBC discussion of the 1984 video). The political establishment is generally wary of user-driven technology because it helps jam new information, content and scrutiny into the system, which challenges political (and media) professionals. YouTube activism might even scare political professionals more than the infamous blogosphere, for the same reason televised attack ads cut more ice than op-eds. Some things you have to see to believe, and video can be much more gripping than words...
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Originally posted at Campaign Matters, The Nation's new blog covering Campaign '08 from the White House and Congress to the grassroots and the netroots.