Blayne Sucks

I just got done watching the CNN - YouTube Democratic Debate and was blown away at how well the format worked. I think there are a lot of things about current American Politics that would disappoint the Founding Fathers, but this format for the debate certainly wouldn’t be one of them. The format also harkens to shades of what Al Gore mentions in his book, The Assault on Reason, about the Internet restoring democracy in America. I am very much looking forward to the Republican Debate in September.

I don’t want to get too much into the politics of it because that could be like writing a book, but I will say that I thought Obama did the best in this debate. He came off as both a young and revitalizing JFK-style candidate and a fighter for the people Teddy Roosevelt-style candidate. I thought Mike Gravel performed admirably as the semi-crazy foil to the Democrats, but really I think Ron Paul has the semi-crazy foil award wrapped up in his role as that to the Republican party.

I am a bit bothered that the debate wasn’t on a major network. Perhaps the popularity of user generated content will push to make future debates on network TV rather than cable. I’m not holding my breath though.

I was kinda surprised that there were less than 3,000 videos posted online about the debates. A one in 3,000 chance of being able to ask a question to the Democratic Presidential Candidates and have it answered on national TV is pretty good. Plus, with the popularity of the format, I am going to go out on a limb and predict that there’s at least 30,000 videos submitted for the Republican Debates.

You can see the questions that were chosen here and you can see the other questions that were asked here. I also would like to see the entire debate posted online, and if I can find a link to it, I’ll add it here. I’m sure eventually those links will break, but they look like they will be good at least until the next presidential election.