As a political editor for BlogHer.org, I'm going to Charleston, S.C to cover the CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential Debates next Monday.

As I wrote on BlogHer, is this debate...

a shift, or is it a stunt?

Speaking of, Time's Ana Marie Cox was pretty snarky about the Web 2.0 nature of the debate: "Attentive readers will recall that excitement among the internetters is about as heated as it appears to be among journalists. Their best hope, I think, is if they get "Obama Girl" to moderate." Oh, snap.

Lou Cabron scoffs,

"while it's morbidly amusing to imagine candidates groveling for LonelyGirl15's endorsement, YouTube is slyly attempting to appear democratic without actually accomplishing anything. But maybe that's YouTube's cynical comment on democracy itself. Maybe they're imagining the event's slogan as: "It's participatory! It's YouTube! And it's stupid! Just like voting..."

Now, come on, Lou. Don't be snarky. There are One Million Strong for Obama on Facebook!

I think this is the problem: not enough women asking questions. In one of our forums, Women's Voices, Women's Vote noted that "of the first 200 [video] submissions, only 34 were from women!" Yuck. I'd love to ask Anderson why he thinks men are rushing to the camcorder...and I must admit, the whole YouTube Debate site does have a very boy feel to it.

Data I've seen shows that hardcore YouTubers are young (avg age 27) and skew male, so I guess it's to be expected that video questioners would be mostly male. On the other hand, if a YouTube debate helps get young men to the polls, hallelujah.