Election 2008, Web 2.o style
Senator John Edwards did something today that will set an example for the rest of the presidential candidates. At noon, the Senator entered a room at the University of New Hampshire and was engaged in a live dialogue with UNH students and an online audience. The event was part of MTV’s Choose or Lose campaign and featured online support from MySpace.
Instead of the normal boring television debates, the dialogue featured an interactive conversation in which online users could post questions for the Senator to answer. The Web site also allowed users to vote on how well the Senator was answering each question. Some of the responses to choose from included ‘answered the question/understands reality’ and ‘bad ideas/out of touch.’ The results from these responses were then put into a pie chart and shown to the Senator throughout the hour-long dialogue. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post presented the online poll information and MTV’s SuChin Pak and Gideon Yago moderated the event. Talk about embracing the Internet and online social networks!! Way to go Edwards!
It was very interesting to watch the reaction of the Senator to the responses from the online community. The majority of the users agreed that Edwards was doing a good job. At one point, when six percent of the viewers thought the Senator was out of touch, he simply said, “if everyone agreed with what I was saying I would be worried.” He even broke down the issue giving the ”rich” people a tax break, and which part of the income is taxed more than others. I actually understood the concept after he explained it— and that’s saying a lot because I don’t do the whole numbers thing!
Overall, the dialogue was very insightful and I think it was a great step for the Edwards campaign. He reached out to an important public and did it in a manner that was comfortable and intelligent at the same time. He really didn’t dodge any questions, even if it meant he had to deal with sensitive or controversial matter. Edwards admitted that he voted for the war in Iraq and also pointed out that he was wrong in doing so. Pretty impressive for someone, let alone a candidate, to come out 
and admit his/her faults!
It was a perfect example of how the candidates can use the Internet as a tool and embrace the tech-savvy generation. By the way, Edwards also has a blog, a MySpacepage and a Facebook page. Definitely something worth checking out. Some of Edwards’ fellow candidates are set to perform on the MySpace/MTV stage as well. So far, 10 more are signed up. These include Obama, Clinton, Giuliani, McCain and others. It should be interesting to see how they relate to the college crowd and the online criticism that comes along with the polls. Good luck with that Hillary!
Photo: Frank Micelotta/ Getty Images/MTV
