Here's a tip to all you fans of videos that feature young people singing and chanting praises to Barack Obama: Download them to your computer before they go viral because the videos will disappear as soon as the inevitable wave of ridicule in the blogosphere hits a fever pitch.

Two cases of such viral embarrassment have happened in less than a week.

The first episode occurred soon after The Drudge Report linked to a video called "Sing For Change," which featured elementary-aged children singing about hope, change and all things Obama. The video was broadly condemned. Even the nonpartisan blog PrezVid criticized the "creepy California parents" who made their kids sing words they couldn't possibly understand in political context.

Apparently stung by the criticism, the creator of the video, Obama supporter Kathy Sawada, made it "private" on YouTube. When YouTube users began attacking her in the comments, she deleted most of the comments but made the clip public again. That didn't last long, though. Now it's private again. (I downloaded the original and posted excerpts at Eyeblast.tv just in case.)

A few days later, another video called "Obama Youth" went viral. It features young black men from the Urban Community Leadership Academy in Kansas City, Mo., marching as they chant "Alpha, Omega," a phrase with messianic meaning. The youngsters also rotely recite Obama's "Yes We Can" motto and presidential plans, and they give him premature credit for who they hope to become.

That video began to spread online last week and hit its viral stride over the weekend. Today, the YouTube user who uploaded the video, presumably an Obama critic based on the video description, pulled it without explanation. (I have a copy of that one, too.)

The good news is that once someone pushes the publish button online, it's impossible to put the video genie back in the offline bottle. You can still watch complete versions of both "Sing For Change" and "Obama Youth" on YouTube, and "Sing For Change" already is the subject of parody after parody.

Obama's online October surprise will continue from now until Election Day and beyond.

"Brilliant. Effective. Revolutionary."

Those are the three words I thought I'd write in response to Barack Obama's text message announcing his Vice Presidential pick. Instead, the only word that comes to mind is "Disappointing."

Let me explain...

Having upgraded recently from a BlackBerry to a white 3G iPhone I went ahead and signed up on my new line for the updates. More text messages? No worries, I had already opted for the unlimited text plan so that I could better follow about a dozen or so folks on Twitter without having to track mileage.

I ripped off the text like a pro -- tapping "VP" to 62262 and clicking send. Within seconds I received a response back from 62262 letting me know that the sign-up was a success.

Noting in my little black book of best practices that even the confirmation note had a call to action ("Please forward"), I cracked a smile in recognition of the genius of Obama online guru Joe Rospars and his team.

I thought, could the be the text that's heard around the world as it got forwarded from an initial few to many? What would the text say?

I was pumped and excited for the text. And I'm a Republican who will not vote for Barack Obama regardless of his running mate.

The promise of direct, exclusive information sent to my iPhone was a heckuva carrot to put out on a stick. Not just for me -- but for others too. In fact, last week when I was training 60 field representatives for the College Republicans (a client) I asked the room who else had signed up -- at least a quarter of the hands slowly grabbed the sky.

Days went by last week since I had signed up. I hadn't received a single text from Barack. Was this thing still working? Indeed, a Tweet would pop up reminding me that the foot was still on the pedal. I even thought it was genius that Barack's team had not sent a text to me. I had signed up for one text, at least initially -- don't break the promise or risk losing me.

So... I... Waited... For... Barack...

After a long week at work, I decided to forget about it for the night. I went out with friends, had sushi, saki, and laughs. I went to bed.

When I woke up this morning, I grabbed my iPhone to start reading through late night tweets, text messages, and emails. OMG. WTH is that? a text message from Barack at 3:04 AM? No way...

Confirmed. It was indeed from Obama's campaign -- but it wasn't from Barack -- the person. The text was from Barack Obama -- the Machine.

Using 148 of their 160-character limit the Machine wrote:

Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3 PM ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!

What were they thinking by not using Barack's voice? Didn't they realize that I'm used to getting very real, personal text messages from my friends? Didn't they know that even I thought that Barack really "got" this modern medium?

Patrick Ruffini blogged this morning that Barack's text wasn't even really worth the wait because it had leaked to the media beforehand. To quote Patrick, "What seemed like a brilliant exercise in media management devolved into a late night rearguard maneuver." Agreed.

So, if I were working for Barack, I would have suggested the following 160-character text (Leave no character behind!):

Senator Joe Biden is my VP pick. Visit www.BarackObama.com now to see a video message from us to you. You are an important part of the Team for Change. Plz fwd!

But... They didn't. Barack didn't text me anything. The Machine did.

I'm disappointed in Barack's team for missing this opportunity to communicate a direct, personal message from Barack and Joe to their people.

So points for using text messaging as a medium to communicate; however, they're just not doing a good job of using it effectively.

You may remember a couple of months ago when Sen. Barack Obama lectured Americans that "we can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

So imagine our surprise yesterday when we saw a large crowd gathered around two large Chevy Suburban SUVs outside the Mayflower Hotel in Washington and learned that none other than Sen. Obama was there and about to depart in one of the SUVs. Of course, we quickly called back to the office, which is only a block away, and got our trusty video camera so we could document the event.

Turns out Sen. Obama was at the Mayflower for a $10,000-a-photo fundraising lunch, according to the Washington Post. So while he recently chided Americans to give up their SUVs, not eat as much as they want and turn off the AC, it appears that he yesterday enjoyed a fancy lunch with fat cat donors, then rode away in an air-conditioned SUV. (Which, in fairness, we point out is probably encouraged by the Secret Service because it's so much safer than compact cars like the Prius. Which is precisely why Sen. Obama shouldn't support policies that lead to higher gas prices and make it harder for average American families to own SUVs if they want the safety they provide.)

In any case, here's our video from the scene:

[Blog post cross-posted from Ed Frank @ Americans for Prosperity.]

At the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum, I interviewed Democratic online guru, Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline, who makes the case that a joint Barack Obama / DNC effort will pull in more than $1 billion online.

I had read Noble making the case for $1 billion earlier that month so I had to find out whether or not he really meant it. Sadly, he did.

One.
Billion.
Dollars.

Think about how big that number is folks.

That's enough money to play in a lot more states than the Machine we're typically used to.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

YouTube allows you to potentially reach everyone with an internet connection. It’s an easy way to connect with your fans and supporters but it’s just as easy (or easier) to be ignored by the masses.

Senator McCain’s YouTube Channel

Total Videos = 217
Total Channel Views = 784,981
Video with the highest # of views = 390,543
A total of 7 videos with over 100,000 views

Senator Obama’s YouTube Channel

Total Videos = 1,146
Total Channel Views = 14,725,339
Video with the highest # of views = 4,616,204
A total of 7 videos with over 1 million views

If you take just a cursory glance at the two YouTube Channels you quickly see one really big difference.

Obama’s channel has videos of regular people talking to the camera. A feature that is noticeably lacking on the McCain channel.

People want to be famous and see themselves on camera, just watch the jumbo tron at a ballgame. If you interview 100 people and upload the videos on YouTube I can guarantee most of them will watch the video and tell their friends to watch it as well. To paraphrase Seth Godin, be remarkable, meaning be worth making a remark about.

Watch these two videos and ask yourself, “If I supported this candidate, which video would I be more likely to tell my friends to watch.” It’s that simple.

Web Ad: Jobs for America

Unite for Change National Wrap-Up

Now it’s YOUR turn to share your thoughts and comment.

Crossposted at MyMcCainBlog.com

On Saturday evening, two e-mails landed in my Gmail inbox, the first from the McCain campaign and the second from Obama’s team. Notice the order and the subject matter:

In case your eyes are as bad as mine (or you aren’t using Firefox
3.0’s nifty zoom feature) how about we blow up the relevant detail of
that image:

So John McCain’s staff sends out a tribute (complete with video) to
the too-soon late, great “Meet the Press” host and NBC Washington
bureau chief Tim Russert, and 45 minutes later, Barack Obama’s staff
sends out a commercial solicitation. Remembering the Titans vs. Buy
More Stuff.

I’m reminded of WashingtonPost.com’s botched e-mail alert the morning Sean Taylor died, and just a tiny bit that recent Sunday e-mail from Newsweek that somehow managed to omit
that edition’s only negative story about the Obama campaign. This one
is a bit more esoteric — how many outside the Beltway are on both
candidate’s e-mail lists?

Well, just about any reporter covering national politics. They
matter, right? And unlike WPNI’s newspaper and magazine, the Obama camp
at least has a rapid response team. I have no doubt this e-mail alert
was prepared and schedulde well in advance of Friday afternoon’s
terrible news. But because e-mail alerts can be timely, they must be timely. The Obama campaign must know this — after all, they beat all other presidential candidates with the first campaign e-mail of the New Year.

Would it have been so difficult to recycle a few of the candidate’s
comments from earlier in the day? They needn’t even go as far as the
McCain campaign did — the specially-recorded tribute video is a little
more personal than McCain’s tarmac remarks early Friday afternoon,
reflecting on the fact that he made 52 appearances on Russert’s “Meet”. And as Sean Hackbarth notes, this was clearly something McCain himself wanted to do.

Checking my inbox archives, I noticed this was the first time the Obama
campaign has flogged its online store in an e-mail subject line since
the last Christmas shopping season. But they have sent no e-mail
acknowledging (let alone mourning) Russert’s untimely passing, and I can’t even find a release on the website. I know the Obama campaign is sort of running against insider Washington, wasn’t Russert pretty much the best kind possible?

For anyone who bothered to open up those e-mails in succession, the juxtaposition looked something like this:

Especially when you consider that national political reporters who
worked alongside or in friendly competition with Russert are the most likely to
have noticed this discrepancy, the advantage here goes to McCain.

P.S. The McCain e-mail could use more color and
better design, but they should get credit for rendering the text in
actual ASCII/Unicode characters.

P.P.S. A personal favorite “Meet the Press” episode was the morning of May 27, 2007,
where Russert’s calm, methodical questioning laid bare Bill
Richardson’s surprising inability to defend himself on almost anything,
from the serious to the trivial. Russert managed to do gotcha without seeming
gotcha, and the hour-long interrogation was one of his most effective.
That was the real end of Gov. Richardson’s presidential campaign. The
transcript is here.

Adapted from an original post at Blog P.I.

As an effective deployment of a modern media strategy, I want to share a recent example engineered by, among others, the Washington State Republican Party putting the hammer to Barack Obama after a *major* gaffe while campaigning in Oregon. I've been given exclusive insight on how this all went down.

Let's dig in...

On Monday at 2:23 PM, Ben Smith of the Politico.com broke the news of Barack who-needs-experience-when-we-can-have-hope Obama making a major gaffe on the campaign trail when he admitted having no knowledge of the Hanford Site, "a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in south-central Washington operated by the United States government."

Ben embedded the following YouTube video of Barack's gaffe which was uploaded anonymously by a brand new YouTube user, IRFSA8654. Natch.

Blogs4McCain.com quickly picked up on the video.

With a hat-tip to Blogs4McCain, Michelle Malkin picked up on the story and added valuable context to the argument by noting that John McCain had been asked the same question and knew all about it. Typical experience wielded by The Mac.

Someone must have tipped off the Associated Press because they were next to pile on Barack.

Today, Fox News' Major Garrett carried the package, added some context, and had this to say:

=PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT=

Republicans immediately pounced on this as a sign of Barack Obama's inexperience as a national candidate. Saying -- how could you not know anything about the Hanford nuclear waste site? It's the best known, most contaminated one in the United States. It's one the Department of Energy is spending almost $2 billion a year to clean up. Those clean-up dates are going to be missed. There's a huge negotiation in the state of Washington about how to extend those deadlines. It's a big issue there. How could you not know anything about it?

So while the Obama campaign says it is genuine and disarming, Republicans fire back -- it's inexperience. And that's going to be one of the core divides in this general election campaign. Barack Obama's genuineness, his likability, his willingness to talk straight with voters vs. Republicans saying he may be able to do all those things but if he's not experienced enough, how reliable a President is he actually going to be?

Small issues, small incident in this town hall in Pendleton, Oregon, but it's going to be something that will be playing out in the campaign throughout.

Today, MoveRed.org, the "youth coalition (ages 16-28) of the King County Republican Party," released this stinging video pulling it all together:

In my opinion, the case-study above shows how you can take a national candidate making a mistake on a local issue and turn that into a national news story. And the best part is that this is just the beginning of this story getting out.

The Washington State Republican Party has just blasted an email to its list asking them to "forward the message" and help make a donation to keep it coming.

Indeed, Porridge, to all of those who had a hand in this one. You're making us proud.

[Cross-posted at TechPresident.]

The title of this entry is an excerpt from a quote by John Hawkins of Right Wing News after IM'ing me a link to this video:

[h/t Allah]

Please discuss (sans action figures).

Remember the now infamous speech Barack Obama gave behind closed doors at a fundraiser in San Francisco where the meme "Bittergate" developed?

How could we ever forget.

Beyond Bittergate, another nugget has emerged from that same speech that Chris Chiasson has unearthed through his close listening to the audio of Barack's speech which is worth noting in this space.

As transcribed by Chris (emphasis and line-breaks to aid readability mine):

Starting at 14 minutes and 50 seconds:

I want to make a point about fund raising because I think it is illustrative of what else is going on. We raised 55 million dollars last month. ... I'm sorry. We raised 55 million in February; we raised 40 million that last month. Now, these are gaudy numbers. But, what's interesting is not the amount raised. 90% of what we raised came over the Internet. 50% were for $50 or less. Our average donation is less than $100.

Now, essentially what we've done is we've created a parallel public financing system. That using the Internet and mobilizing people all across the country - over 1.3 million donors - we've created a system where ordinary people can actually finance, can fuel, a campaign at the highest levels.

It's the same way that we've competed organizationally. We didn't have all the fancy endorsements early on. We remember - you know, we had some courageous endorsements from Barbara Williams and some other folks - but most of the big names here in ... California went the other way. And yet, we were able to compete everywhere.

Why is that? Essentially, groups formed themselves using technology. We have an Open Source system. For people to just grab onto good ideas. They start organizing their neighbors, organizing their friends. And, next thing you knew, we'd built the best political organization in the country. And that's what we have. I mean, we have the best national political organization that anybody has seen in a generation.

This realization by Barack that his success is due (at least partly) to the connectivity of the Internet is important.

There is a Revolution taking hold of American politics. I only fear that this Revolution continues to thrive on the wrong side of the aisle.

We continue to have work to do. I hope you're with me.

Today was the first bloggers briefing of 2008 and to kick things off, Bruce Bartlett came by to plug his new book, Wrong on Race, which sets the record straight on the Democrats record on race relations. Jim Pinkerton told us about his new project, Fence by Date Certain, which is a pledge he wants all lawmakers to sign that will build a fence to secure the US border by a set date. We also got the scoop on the Supreme Court's upcoming decision on an Indiana photo ID law that will have wide-ranging implications for vote fraud in the US.

Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried
Bruce Bartlett joined us to discuss his new book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past. He explained that there two major misconceptions that black voters have about the GOP regarding race. One is that the South is all racist, therefore since the South now votes Republican, Republicans are all racist. The second is that the GOP is held to a ridiculous double-standard. So when Trent Lott compliments Strum Thurmond, he’s pilloried in the media, but when Chris Dodd praises Robert Byrd, a former leader in the KKK, no one utters a peep.

Bartlett noted that the Republican message was appealing to the black voters. He gave the example of Tom Tancredo speaking to the NAACP in Detroit. He was the only Republican to show up for the NAACP’s debate and he,

Gave anti-immigrant rant, and got a standing ovation.

When asked how the Democrats nomination of Barack Obama would affect Republican efforts to reach out to black voters, Bartlett responded that while Barack would certainly pull a lot of support from the black community, his nomination would still be an enormous advantage for the GOP, because we’ll see new leadership take charge of the black community pushing aside the Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s, who are extremely liberal.

Fence by Date Certain

Jim Pinkerton, Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor told us about his latest effort, the "Fence by Date Certain" pledge.

According to Pinkerton, the pledge is:

dedicated to one clear-cut goal: We want the US government to build a secure double fence across the US-Mexico border. And we want federal politicians to pledge to do so by a date certain.

Heritage’s Conn Carroll thought that the pledge was too focused on terrorism, and needed to talk more about economic issues.

Pinkerton agreed and stated that he had no qualms about other people/groups using or modifying the pledge, and actively encouraged people to do so.

Pinkerton also described a conversation he had with Mike Huckabee about illegal immigration, wherein Huckabee told him that the first question he always got at town hall meetings was on illegal immigration.

Pinkerton thought that politicians like Huckabee and Mitt Romney, are behind this issue, because:

When politicians see a winner, they tend to ride it.

Vote Fraud

Michael Thielen from the Republican National Lawyers Association came by to give us the run down on tomorrow’s Supreme Court Decision about an Indiana photo ID law.

Thielen noted that this issue is a top concern for Barack Obama. He‘s single-handedly blocking the White House’s nominees to the FEC over this issue, and the biggest bill he has in the Senate would put a major chill on poll watching.

Thielen explained that every year we lose elections because of vote fraud, and the same thing will happen this cycle; but the best way to prevent vote fraud is by having strong, enforced Voter ID laws on the books.

Rob Bluey wrote a great column for Townhall on the Voter ID issue as well, that you should check out.