Obama's Bush Rebuttal Breaks Another YouTube Record

As The Nation reported on Monday, Barack Obama was the only presidential candidate to tape a rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union for YouTube. It's paying off.

By Tuesday afternoon, "Barack Obama's response to Bush's final State of the Union" was the most watched clip in the world, drawing a over 300,000 views in under 20 hours. The public has shown overwhelming and sustained interest in hearing from Obama directly. This is the third Obama video to shoot into YouTube's top three in the past 10 days -- past clips of naked celebrities and Scientology rants -- and the first video that was shot specifically for web viewers, rather than broadcasting documentary footage of a speech.

The Obama campaign drives traffic by blasting video links to committed supporters, who then share clips with their social networks. About 40 percent of the new video's viewers came through the campaign website, for example, while Obama's official YouTube channel has another 20,000 subscribers. Then hundreds of thousands of other viewers still pour in from YouTube and across the Internet. (About one out of every hundred viewers of this video came from a blog entry by Miguel Antonio Guzmán. Another chunk of viewers for the Ted Kennedy endorsement video came from Hillary Clinton's backyard, through a Columbia Alumni magazine website.) Meanwhile, Obama's YouTube channel, which hosts over 500 clips, has drawn a whopping 11.5 million views so far. Clinton's channel has drawn about one tenth the views (1.3 million), while Edwards has not even broken into seven digits.

The traditional media has been slow to grasp Obama's YouTube surge. (There has not been a single article in a major newspaper about the new records in the last 10 days.) YouTube politics are largely covered for gaffes (Macaca) and attacks (1984 ad). But the press is starting to notice the flipside of the Obama campaign's communication strategy. It's the part that affects them. As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports in a new article:

In an age of all-out political warfare, the Obama campaign is a bit of an odd duck: It is not obsessed with winning each news cycle. [Obama] remains a remote figure to those covering him, and his team, while competent and professional, makes only spotty attempts to drive its preferred story lines in the press... Obama often goes days without taking questions from national reporters... Some reporters say Obama seems disdainful toward journalists, having submitted to precisely one off-the-record chat over beer several months ago in Iowa. To them, the absence of a senior official traveling with the press is a sign of benign neglect.... Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe [adds] "The contact is limited. . . . They see the national media more as a logistical problem than a channel for getting stuff out."

So reporters are noticing that Obama is not using them to get stuff out. As a presidential candidate, of course, he is getting tons of stuff out. But whenever possible, he is routing around the filters and gatekeepers so that he can speak directly to voters.

It is a classic disintermediation approach.

The campaign events, speeches and clips are targeted to reach the voting public and bypass media framing. Kurtz describes how a Times reporter finally confronted Obama on a recent trip with a question -- about whether Bill Clinton was getting "inside his head." It's the kind of vapid media framing that annoys candidates and voters alike. And apparently, many people would rather hear Obama speak substantively in response to the State of the Union than hear him take strategy questions. There is a potential downside here, of course. The media does not usually like being disintermediated.

Ari Melber writes for The Nation, where this post first appeared.

Comments

[lungfish]

Yet another sign that Obama is in tune with America... I may vote for him if he keeps this up.... The Billary bunch and the rest apparantly don't know that a lot of people use You Tube for all kinds of information but Barack knows and that requires a little more sensitivity then anyone else seems to show.

[PKSSK]

Excellent!!!!!

[sky2evan]

Smart move, and very well done.

Another example of how creativity & intelligence trumps 35 years of experience.

[Lazslo]

I saw the Youtube video - amazing!

[timm0]

Very well done. Best part is Iraq. My only problem is with his continued bipartisan concepts. He needs to be setting up the Rs for obstructionist charges after he's elected. Case in point is simple. In Obama's first state of the union address, is mcconnel gonna get his miserable ass out of his chair? No way. And when Obama talks like this, neocon gamesmanship activities will become an Obama failure to "unite." It's a failure that's easy to avoid by framing it correctly.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Got to give Obama his due. Terrific YouTube video.

[MPeter]

Boootiful. That was a great response to Bush. Obama 08. he is inspiring, thoughtful and believable.

[MPeter]

How can the Clintons ever be trusted? Hillary pledged with other cand candidate to abide by DNC rules when the DNC decided to punish Florida. Now, after a string of humiliating defeats and rebuffs, she wants Florida and Michigan delegates where she had no challenger!
Is this the woman ready for change? Is this the woman ready to be President on Day One? How about you start by being honest? Respect the pledge and the DNC rules!!!

[mediamarv]

One of the best things about that video is that there is no Matthews spewing nonsense, no winger telling us how Obama can't get elected, and bimbo asking dumb questions to tired old white men who only exist on DC talk shows.
Keep up the good work, Senator Obama.

[SeanGardner]

You know what Ari? This is a great moment in American History. It really is.

Obama started with no money, no organizations, no big endorsements, and to hear posters in the blogosphere predict it, "no chance". But people were wrong.

Obama has raised over $125 million and counting. He has won two states, including Iowa, the pertually enigmatic PURPLE State. And, he continues to get more endorsements and support by the week from latinos, Asian-Americans, Caucasians, Arab-Americans, African-Americans, and every group I missed.

Indeed, as Keli Goff noted today, "Obama's "family reunions are a sort of mini-United Nations, complete with relatives who resemble the dark-skinned African-American comedian Bernie Mac, and others who resemble former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher." This is a very important point Goff makes because Obama has the most diverse staff of any presidential campaign, and the most diverse, broad-based coalition of voters and volunteers that politics has seen in a long time.

Obama has never made race the centerpiece of his campaign. He believes that race matters the same way that gender matters, age matters, region/geography matters, etc. They all matter, so we should pretending they don't. But Obama believes that transcending our differences for the good of our country and humanity in general means more. I agree.

I believe we stand at the doorstep of profound, fundamential change in this country. That the YOUTUBE generation is more inspired by Obama's vision of change and experience than the divisive one being peddled by Hillary and her running mate Bill, is not surprising.

Thanks for another great post Ari. I so look forward to reading your observations.

[DoninJoisey]

EXACTLY what I want to hear.
Hope and common sense rather than fear and ideology.