'Tis the Season

Screw the holidays. (I dare you.)

I'm talking campaign season.

With the Presidential Election less than a year away, the candidates will be trying to distinguish themselves from each other (and in the case of the Republican candidates, even the guy most people associate with their party).

Collectively, the Democrats have devised a plan that could represent the future of national politics, or just as easily a capitalization on the YouTube faithful.

FlipperTV

The party's "trackers," people sent out to follow opponents and record them on the campaign trail, have made their video available to the public. FlipperTV encourages you (yeah... they're talking to you) to download the footage and edit it as you see fit.

Here is a write up from the NY Times.

My first thought is that this would be an easy way for the party to let some enthusiastic kid create an attack ad, possibly by misrepresenting a candidate or their statements, and do so with the excuse that they have no ties to the person who put the ad together, freeing them from any negative consequences. (All while reaping the benefits of the negative ad.)

Advertising can play with someone's memory of events. Jeepers, even a photoshopped picture can do that. This could potentially have a huge effect on the way a candidate is remembered. For instance, if I mentioned Howard Dean to you, odds are the first thing that would come to mind would be that bat$#!% crazy yelp that was looped for weeks straight on every cable news station. Remember that? Of course you do. How about his stance on health care? Not so much? Hmph... strange.

This could be all be a case of the Dems wanting blood for the way John Kerry was treated during the last go 'round. Call it "Swift Boat II: Electric Boogaloo." (Or revenge for the Dean Hollerfest... Dean is in a seat of power these days...)


What do you think?