Well, I got done voting a little while ago. Everything went just fine. Be sure to check out my quick video recap at the bottom of the post.

On my way to the polls

My Ride

Me on my way in

Electioneering signs outside the polling place

Vote Here

Entrance

The Line

My Ballot

Voting Machine

Voting Booths

Mission Accomplished

This is the kind of out of the box thinking that has brought the Obama campaign so far. Regardless of your political persuasion, you’ve got to admit that this is creative and not the type of thing you expect to see from a serious presidential campaign.

I’d appreciate your responses (be they simple yes or no answers or lengthy explanations) in the comments. Let me be clear. I am not asking if these organizations should take positions on issues. I am not asking if they should engage in healthy debate or try to advance a viewpoint they believe is Biblical. What I am asking is if these organizations should go so far as to actually say, “You should vote for Senator Bill Smith for President.”

My reason for asking is that I wonder if it doesn’t somehow muddy the Gospel when a Christ-centered organization supports a particular candidate or party. Does it imply that the organization believes Jesus supports that candidate/party. It’s one thing for a group that happens to be comprised of Christ-followers to endorse a candidate; it’s another for a group whose mission is explicitly centered around Jesus or the Gospel to endorse someone.

Like I said, I’m not talking about taking a position or having a debate about issues, although I would consider an “issue ad” that said “John McCain doesn’t care about the poor” or “Barack Obama kills babies” to be an endorsement and not honest debate.

And just so someone doesn’t pull the Hitler card, let me state for the record that in the case of someone like Hitler, yes, I do believe that the Church should speak out against that person. With this question, I’m more concerned about typical American elections than extreme scenarios.

Update: To clarify, I’m not talking about a legality issue. I’m not asking if these organizations should or should not be legally allowed to endorse a candidate. I’m questioning whether or not, as followers of Jesus running a Christ-centered organzation, the people who operate the organization should have the organization endorse a candidate (what they do individually is a different matter).

Update 2: Grammar/Style issues addressed.

Watch This:

Now Read This: Sen. Stevens Indicted On 7 Corruption Counts

Apparently, she’s not proud of the endorsement.

Hat tip: TPM Election Central

Moments ago Hillary Clinton, while announcing the votes of the New York delegation, moved to suspend the rules of the Democratic National Convention and declare Barack Obama the Democratic Presidential nominee by acclamation, thus suspending the roll call vote. At an inflection point in this election when the Democratic party could either unite in an effort to win the presidency or divide and likely lose, Hillary Clinton rose to the occasion to unite the Democratic Party.

[Update] The official announcement is here: http://polfeeds.com/item/Message-from-Barack-The-Next-Vice-President

News has recently leaked that Barack Obama has selected Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) as his Vice Presidential running mate. I find this to be an incredibly interesting choice.

At age 29, Senator Biden was the youngest person ever elected to the U.S. Senate. He turned 30 (the Constitutionally mandated minimum age for a U.S. Senator) between his election and his swearing in. His birthday being on November 20th, it would be very difficult for anyone younger to ever be elected to the Senate.

He has run for the Democratic Presidential nomination on a few occasions (most recently during this cycle) and is known to be quite verbose, having occasionally gotten himself into trouble as a result. However, as of late he has shown more restraint when speaking, famously answering simply “Yes” when asked if he would be able to exercise said verbal restraint as President. On a related note, Biden got himself into hot water early last year when he made comments about Senator Obama that some believed to be racist. I’m not going to get too far into that, except to say that I believe the comments were mostly innocent but that they do belie an unfortunate stereotype of African-Americans. Senator Biden meant no ill-will, but nonetheless, he chose his words poorly and in doing so exposed some all too common assumptions about Black Americans. Of course, at least part of this can probably be chalked up to Biden’s natural tendency to misspeak.

Moving away from the trivia, Senator Biden brings a wealth of foreign policy experience to the ticket. He is widely recognized as a foreign policy expert, having been Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While his selection may help allay some fears about Senator Obama’s perceived lack of experience, he brings no state/regional electoral advantage, and his long tenure in the Senate may undermine Senator Obama’s message of change. That said, I think it more likely that the powerful message and presence that Obama brings will make up for this.

As for my opinion, well, I like Senator Biden. He’s smart, and he knows the issues. He’s not perfect, and I’m not sure he’s the greatest choice politically. However, he is more than qualified for the job. While I’m sure political considerations came into account when selecting a running mate and I may be underestimating his political value, this is very possibly one time when a candidate’s quality and qualification trumped political consideration. Kudos to Senator Obama for choosing someone who can fill his shoes should the unfortunate need ever arise.

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

While this is my favorite, there are more of these at punditkitchen.com.

With 78% of precincts reporting, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 59-40. I think it’s safe to say that Barack Obama has won the Wyoming caucuses.

Or at least those willing do some research. Brian Stelter of the New York Times is something of a phenom when it comes to news about the TV industry, having started the influential blog tvnewser.com and subsequently being hired by the New York Times straight out of college, but his article on the “It’s 3 AM and I’m ready to be President” campaign ads of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (embedded below – hat tip to TechPresident) shows that being an expert on one medium doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re qualified to discuss other types of media.

Mr. Stelter states that “Three days after it made its television debut, the Clinton commercial had registered more than 600,000 views on YouTube, and Mr. Obama’s recorded over 200,000, making the dueling advertisements the first breakout hits of the YouTube campaign. (Some campaign videos are lucky to receive 10,000 views.)”

While it may be true that some campaign videos don’t hit 10,000 views, I’m not sure what metric that Mr. Stelter is using to determine what makes a YouTube video a “breakout hit.” By far, the biggest video of the campaign season is “Yes We Can” by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, having received over 12 million views spread across the numerous copies posted to YouTube, but we can look back much farther for breakout hits. Perhaps the first big hit of the 2008 Presidential election was 1984/Vote Different by Phil de Vellis with over 5 million views (again over multiple uploads), and who could forget Obama Girl. None of these are candidate produced videos, but we need only go to Obama’s response to the State of the Union (1.3 million), Obama’s victory speech in Iowa (1 million), and many others to find videos that have been viewed many more times than either of these. In fact, Obama’s SOTU response has been watched more times than both of those ads put together.

I’ll admit that I may be overly defensive of new forms of media, be it blogs, online video, or social networks, but it irks me when someone in the mainstream press makes a blatantly untrue statement that trivializes the revolution that is taking place in the field of communications.

Since this is my blog, I’m also going to take the opportunity to editorialize on the videos just a bit and note that YouTube users have rated Clinton’s “3 AM” video with one star out of a possible five (Obama’s version has four) and that tens of thousands of her views have come from an extremely heavily trafficked DailyKos post slamming the ad.

Hillary’s 3 AM Ad

Obama’s 3 AM Ad

Yes We Can

1984

Obama’s SOTU Response

Obama’s Iowa Speech

Obama’s New Hampshire Speech (Just because I love it and because it’s been viewed more times than Hillary’s 3 AM ad.)

Okay, so “notworking” is far too strong of a term, but I couldn’t resist the catchy title. TechPresident recently did a brief review of Hillary Clinton’s new Facebook app, mentioning that it’s pretty good but that it came around a bit late. This got me thinking about Obama’s Facebook app and the my.barackobama.com social network. Obama’s new media staff has done an excellent job of leveraging the Internet (or the Interwebs as some of us prefer), making it one of the driving forces behind the Obama campaign. However, the excitement over this new type of campaigning aside, I have two critiques of areas that I think could be improved upon.

The Obama Facebook application is very robust… once you actually go to the application’s canvass page. However, I would bet that the most important part of most applications, this one included, is the profile box. It is what my friends see when they come to my profile, and this is the part of the application that I deal with most often. I’ve only visited the canvass page a handful of times. When I want to interact with Obama content, I go to the Obama website or to Digg. When I’m on Facebook, I go to my profile, my friends’ profiles, and my feed.

Unfortunately, the profile box for the application is very limited. Currently, all it has is a thumbnail from a video about Obama’s win in the Maine caucuses. That happened over two weeks ago (an eternity on the Interwebs), and four states plus DC have held primaries since then. This space might be better used by feeding it content from a variety of sources like the Obama Digg account (get me to vote for stuff), the campaign blog (keep me up to date with what’s going on), or YouTube (show me one of those amazing speeches). This could be done automatically through a simple RSS aggregator like SimplePie. Alternatively, it could show me the latest actions that my friends have taken in the Obama application, like which stories they’ve voted for or commented on.

My point is that even though I am an avid Facebooker, I rarely get beyond an app’s profile box, and I’m guessing the same is true for many others.

As for the my.barackobama.com social network, my only suggestion is that they make it easier to find friends. Right now you can search by zip code, common groups, and name, but these are only helpful for finding Obama supporters near me (want to guess how many there are in Washington DC) or if I take the time to enter each of my friend’s names (not going to happen, too many friends). Consequently, I only have one friend on my Obama account, even though I live and work in the most politically active city in the U.S. In short, they need to implement a friend finder that searches e-mail contacts, much like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, et cetera all have.

Again, these are relatively minor critiques, but I think they are important ones (especially the friend finder). On the whole, the Obama new media team has done an amazing job. I don’t think anyone predicted that online politics would be at this stage at this point in time.