Obama's Bush Rebuttal Breaks Another YouTube Record

As The Nation reported on Monday, Barack Obama was the only presidential candidate to tape a rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union for YouTube. It's paying off.

By Tuesday afternoon, "Barack Obama's response to Bush's final State of the Union" was the most watched clip in the world, drawing a over 300,000 views in under 20 hours. The public has shown overwhelming and sustained interest in hearing from Obama directly. This is the third Obama video to shoot into YouTube's top three in the past 10 days -- past clips of naked celebrities and Scientology rants -- and the first video that was shot specifically for web viewers, rather than broadcasting documentary footage of a speech.

The Obama Campaign drives traffic by blasting video links to committed supporters, who then share clips with their social networks. About 40 percent of the new video's viewers came through the campaign website, for example, while Obama's official YouTube channel has another 20,000 subscribers. Then hundreds of thousands of other viewers still pour in from YouTube and across the Internet. (About one out of every hundred viewers of this video came from a blog entry by Miguel Antonio Guzmán. Another chunk of viewers for the Ted Kennedy endorsement video came from Hillary Clinton's backyard, through a Columbia Alumni magazine website.) Meanwhile, Obama's YouTube channel, which hosts over 500 clips, has drawn a whopping 11.5 million views so far. Clinton's channel has drawn about one tenth the views (1.3 million), while Edwards has not even broken into seven digits.

The traditional media has been slow to grasp Obama's YouTube surge. (There has not been a single article in a major newspaper about the new records in the last 10 days.) YouTube politics are largely covered for gaffes (Macaca) and attacks (1984 ad). But the press is starting to notice the flipside of the Obama Campaign's communication strategy. It's the part that affects them. As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports in a new article:

In an age of all-out political warfare, the Obama campaign is a bit of an odd duck: It is not obsessed with winning each news cycle. [Obama] remains a remote figure to those covering him, and his team, while competent and professional, makes only spotty attempts to drive its preferred story lines in the press... Obama often goes days without taking questions from national reporters... Some reporters say Obama seems disdainful toward journalists, having submitted to precisely one off-the-record chat over beer several months ago in Iowa. To them, the absence of a senior official traveling with the press is a sign of benign neglect.... Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe [adds] "The contact is limited. . . . They see the national media more as a logistical problem than a channel for getting stuff out."

So reporters are noticing that Obama is not using them to get stuff out. As a presidential candidate, of course, he is getting tons of stuff out. But whenever possible, he is routing around the filters and gatekeepers so that he can speak directly to voters.

It is a classic disintermediation approach.

The campaign events, speeches and clips are targeted to reach the voting public and bypass media framing. Kurtz describes how a Times reporter finally confronted Obama on a recent trip with a question -- about whether Bill Clinton was getting "inside his head." It's the kind of vapid media framing that annoys candidates and voters alike. And apparently, many people would rather hear Obama speak substantively in response to the State of the Union than hear him take strategy questions. There is a potential downside here, of course. The media does not usually like being disintermediated.

Comments (7)

1. VERY STRONG STATEMENT!

   This leaves little doubt that he will GOVERN AS A PROGRESSIVE!

   Posted by Metteyya at 01/29/2008 @ 5:58pm

2. Posted by JOMAMMA 01/29/2008 @ 6:04pm

   Why can't we get some normal conservatives on here instead of the fringe nutbags who think everything wrong with America is because of "Those damn liberals" and who think everything that is right is a product of the conservative movement.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/29/2008 @ 6:17pm

3. Posted by FRANKGRITS 01/29/2008 @ 6:50pm

   At least they are no less convincing than Hillary or Bill talking about change in Washington!

   Posted by Metteyya at 01/29/2008 @ 7:05pm

4. The Obama campaign has done very well with reaching out to people on the web. I read some of the posts on the blog and you can tell Hillary's camp is not as web savy. Check out Political Humor [hillarydivides.com]. Lastest poll: over 90% agree Bill is running for a third term.

   Posted by indep2008 at 01/29/2008 @ 7:28pm

5. "Lastest poll: over 90% agree Bill is running for a third term." Posted by INDEP2008 01/29/2008 @ 7:28pm

   Hilarious. And true, ain't he?

   Posted by sloper at 01/29/2008 @ 9:24pm

6. Here's a kind of "disintermediation" that I'd favor: Let some real journalists dig up real facts about all the candidates' voting records and present them in an easy-to-read comparative chart, bypassing the candidates and their spin.

   But mediation also has its place, if it concerns itself with substantive questions. Why doesn't Obama give an interview to a thoughtful journalist who hasn't endorsed him yet? Somebody like Terry Gross?

   I need to sleep now, but I'll check out Obama's video tomorrow. Sweet dreams, everybody.

   Posted by JakobFabian at 01/29/2008 @ 11:01pm

7. Obama has inspired me like no one has since the 60's. His message of hope resonates in my spirit...if there was ever a time for hope, we need it now. If there was ever a time that we need to come together - red states and blue states, regardless of ethnicity and gender, regardless of rich or poor - and be ONE America, it is now. I've always admired Hillary's intelligence, but the truth is: Some of the ruthlessness of the Clintons campaigning startled me. And, the notion that her years, not in elected office but as First Lady to a Governor and President makes her better prepared to be President is insulting. I hope Obama wins the Democratic nomination. If he doesn't, the Democratic party will lose again. If he doesn't, this might be the first time in my life - and I shutter to even say it - that even I may vote Republician.

   Posted by minister zel at 02/02/2008 @ 5:14pm