Joe Biden, Video Campaigner

Hey kids, I’m finally recovered from the N-Ten conference last week — thanks to everyone who came to the social media panel Michael Silberman and I put on. It was a hoot and a half, despite the lack of audio, and people definitely came armed with good questions. Thanks especially to Riché Zamor, whose provision of a laptop and a working wireless connection saved our asses, seeing as the hotel wifi was down and our presentations were entirely online….

Lots of interesting stuff happened while I was checked out, so let’s get down to bidness. First off, Joe Biden seems to be trying to be the video candidate par excellence, at least judging from a couple of interesting moves he made last week. First, as Steve Rubel and others have noted, he was the first candidate to prepare a video reply to a video question asked via Jeff Jarvis’s PrezVid site. An actual online conversation between a candidate and a voter! Why should candidates talk directly to the public like this? As original questioner JD Lasica put it on his own site:

Sen. John Edwards? Sen. Barack Obama? Sen. Hillary Clinton? Let’s hear from you, without a scripted, polished, orchestrated video production. Just talk into the camera — talk to us. (Sorry, videotaping your speech in front of a political audience doesn’t cut it.) What better way to talk directly to the people without having to spend millions on advertising, without having to play games with a cynical political press corps?

Biden’s also not afraid to butt heads directly with his opponents online: a new site puts clips of his Iraq position next to those of his opponents (no doubt carefully chosen to put him in his best light and them in their worst). From Nicole Gaudiano’s coverage in the Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal:

“I guess everything in politics has a little bit of risk attached to it,” said Larry Rasky, Biden’s communications director. “But we are determined to make this race about the issues, and especially about the differences among the candidates about their approach to Iraq. We’re willing to deal with that risk.”

Note also the nice e.politics quotes in the body of the article — our plan to conquer the world proceeds apace! If I could just get that damn robot/kung fu army finished….

– cpd