Politics 2.0: "Vote Different/1984" Ad

San Francisco Chronicle says it "represents a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising."



This Pro-Obama/Anti-Hillary video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era."

So far - 3million views and counting on YouTube since its early March debut!

This user-created mashup has "changed the zone" between political campaigns, their followers and the Internet, says Simon Rosenberg, president of the Washington-based New Democrat Network, an influential party advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

With presidential campaigns now poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising that will blanket television before November 2008, this seemingly home-produced video -- created with software and a laptop, and likely without the benefit of a team of expensive political consultants -- opens a new window, Rosenberg said. It has dramatized a brave new world in which passionate activists outside the structure of traditional campaigns have the power to shape the message -- even for a presidential candidate.

The ad is proof that "anybody can do powerful emotional ads ... and the campaigns are no longer in control," Rosenberg said. "It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that's a 20th century broadcast model."

It also dramatizes that today, political activists with the Internet as their ammunition have gone from being "just donors to the cause," he said, "to being partners in the fight. And they don't have to wait for permission."

via WSJ, SF Chronicle, NYTimes