Watch This: GOOD Magazine Breaks Down Fundraising for the First Billion Dollar Race for the White House

Fundraising flunkies and compliance junkies:

Check out this great motion piece breaking down the who’s got the bucks and where the cash comes from in the first $1,000,000,000 campaign.

Brought to you by the great folks at GOOD Magazine.

Talking Shop: My Appearance on Wilshire & Washington’s BlogTalkRadio Show

Shameless self-promotion alert!!!

Tonight I bellied up to the pundit bar and appeared as a guest on the BlogTalkRadio edition of the excellent blog Wilshire & Washington.

Maegan Carberry, who I met on the Obama campaign invited suckered me into a rough Q&A by herself and Variety Editor-At-Large Ted Johnson.

I don’t know who keeps telling people that I know what I’m talking about (It’s me.), but I can’t say I dislike the attention.

For a refresher course on my past punditry, take a look at the clips below from my appearances on KNBC Los Angeles’ NewsConference…




Here’s my thank you card, Senator Clinton…

At least it’s not another damn sweater!

Obama and Edwards - Winning Them Over

A pair of videos this morning show Barack Obama and John Edwards drawing support from two unexpected sources.

Edwards continues the story of the two phonebanking stories he posted yesterday:

Can you believe it? A Republican supporting Edwards. How’s that for electability in the General?

Obama’s supporter comes from perhaps an even more surprising place, and potentially a more helpful one in the Democratic primaries:

Yup. She was a Clinton supporter. Now she’s with Barack. So, aside from losing their New Hampshire Chairman (who was also a National Co-Chair), who engaged in some pretty nasty dirty tricks; now Hillary’s campaign is losing boots on the ground, as well.

***UPDATE***

The Obama video above, featuring the Clinton precinct captain has been picked up by Drudge. Watch its traffic…

Presidential Debates and the Special Olympics…

…What are places where everyone is the winner, Alex?

Wait! Before you think Edwards ran away with the debate, here’s a clip saying how great Obama was:

And since everyone was the winner yesterday, here’s a clip that the Clinton campaign has put out:

So, in three clips from three campaigns - all culled from the same news segment - we have three winners. Rashomon, anyone?

BONUS!!! Here’s a clip from Fox News where Edwards is the winner!

Since he has clips from two networks, does that make Edwards the real winner here?

What was Hillary Clinton up to while Barack Obama was palling around with Oprah?

Why…

Making an ad, of course!

So, there you have it. Hillary Clinton’s mom supports her.

This ad is should put to rest all the doubters that Hillary is not human. She has a mom, and a kid. What could be more regular than that? And for those who’d call her calculating and out for herself, her mom lets us know that she was never a jealous person and has always helped others. So, there.

And that last line, “she ought to be elected…even if she weren’t my daughter.” Sounds a lot like Bill’s endorsement language, that he’d supporter her even if they weren’t married. Of course, she is Hillary’s mom. And Bill and Hillary are married. So, it makes you wonder…

For the web, the Clinton campaign followed up on the commercial with this nice piece featuring Hillary, mom, and Chelsea - all grows up.

This well-made video is in the style of Hillary’s other road pieces. Peppy (though canned) music, a mix of fawning interviews and retail politics b-roll, a few carefully chosen lines from her rap.

Don’t get me wrong. The Clinton campaigns videos have all been very well done. My only complaint is that they just feel like longer versions of the same, old campaign commercials. Take a chance. Break down the walls. Let us see Hillary.

I’ve met her a few times and found her very pleasant. Surprisingly so, after the decades of Right-Wing smearing directed at her. Though not the charmer her husband is, she was a real pleasure to talk to for the few minutes at a time when our paths crossed. Yet, in the extremely personal medium that is web video, the Clinton campaign’s pieces are still just incredibly guarded.

Instead of making Sopranos spoofs to try and show that she has a sense of humor. Let the cameras follow her, and keep rolling, and actually capture her sense of humor.

InfoMania on Presidential Vids

InfoMania - a series of “pods” on Current_ - takes a look at campaign videos in this segment that I saw on thre tube a day or two ago.

As the year - and primary season - head down the stretch, I expect a lot of these video roundups.

I may even have to make one of my own.

YouTube - Hillary at the Iowa JJ Dinner

Playing catch up a bit here, but there were a number of great videos revolving around the Iowa J-J Dinner.

Barack Obama put out amazing video work around the J-J. Not to be left behind, the Clinton video put out a nice piece after the event in their usual speech/testimonial style.

PWNED! What Gravel was up to during the Vegas debate

Former Senator Mike Gravel was excluded from last week’s debate in Las Vegas. The video above shows how he handled the situation - by holding an event where he yells at the television. Thanks to Tivo, you don’t even have to miss any of the debate while he gives his responses.

Actually, this event was a nice way to deal with the situation.

Now, it wasn’t a surprise to the Alaskan that he was being left out of the party at UNLV. So, ahead of the debate his campaign also produced the video below, which takes a humorous look at what he’d be doing. To wit, he’d be pwning people at Halo III.

Edwards Hammers Away at Clinton (and in New Orleans)

Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards launched his campaign from the 9th Ward of New Orleans. From time to time over the course of the campaign he has returned there to work in the community with supporters from One Corps - the citizen activism off-shoot of his campaign. While the Clinton campaign was offering debate watching parties with Bill, and the Obama team had “Dinner With Barack,” Edwards gave away the chance to join him in working up a sweat rebuilding homes in New Orleans.

Edwards has shown that he knows his way around a hammer. Perhaps that is why he received the endorsement of the Carpenters union, eh?

But, in the days and weeks that have now passed since the Democratic Debate in Philadelphia, Edwards has been doing other hammering as well - with rival Hillary Clinton held with tongs against the anvil.

Entitled “The Politics of Parsing,” the video above is one of the most effective web videos of the campaign to date. While I evangelize day in, day out about using video to let voters get to know your candidate; there is also necessity the use it to help them get to know your opponent. Edwards campaign put this video out on the heels of the well-covered brouhaha near the end of the Philly debate. It makes their case with sound and titles and visually reinforces the point.

Feeling that they’d scored a hit, the campaign followed up with a flashback to the YearlyKos event a while back. On the 2008 candidate panel, Clinton raised a few electronic eyebrows among the Kossacs by stating - in no uncertain terms - that she would continue to take contributions from lobbyists, because they “represent real people.” That was a line perfectly teed up for both the populist Edwards and the reformer Obama.

After their initial hit on Clinton’s “positions” on the issue of drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, and the follow up with her clear defense of Washington lobbyists, Edwards campaign closed the circle with a video news clipping of Edwards concisely answering the question Clinton danced around.

This series of clips - which were woven into a fundraising push - demonstrate the power of narrative continuity across multiple pieces. While each stood up well as episodic clips, the story they told as a thought-out series was even stronger. And notice none of them included the candidate giving the stump speech for the umpteenth time!

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