The Web on the Candidates

A new poll from CBS, the New York Times, and MTV shows that younger Americans aged 17-29 favor Barack Obama (18%)and Hillary Clinton (17%) for president, and that the majority of them lean left. One-third have been to a candidate's website and 15% have visited a candidate's MySpace or Facebook profile. But will this group actually go out to the real polls? "Nearly three-fourths of 17 to 29-year-olds say they're registered to vote, and most of those who aren’t say they plan to register before the 2008 election."

The Candidates on the Web

Tomorrow Chris Dodd will be the next candidate featured by YouTube's Spotlight series. This morning Tim Tagaris of the Dodd internet team told us what to expect. According to Tagaris, the video will depart from the the formula followed by most of the featured candidates, in which they briefly explain their backgrounds and their stance on an issue and ask viewers to respond with their own hopes and dreams and, vaguely, their opinions. Instead, Dodd will critique the way the mainstream news media has beeen covering the election, for example showing a brief clip of Wolf Blitzer talking about Hillary Clinton's "very important question" about her theme song. He'll then explain his amendment to the Defense Authorization bill designed to end the war in Iraq and ask viewers to perform a somewhat involved task: go to their Senators' offices and videotape a conversation with them about the amendment. The idea, says Tagaris, is to have supporters focus on and investigate real issues, rather than simply have them select a theme song (which, we should add, was probably pre-selected anyway). Tagaris says the goal is to use the megaphone of the race to speak about important issues. We're looking forward to seeing the video itself, and seeing what level of participation it inspires.