A “candidate mashup”, this is how Yahoo entitled its video Q&A session between all eight Democratic candidates for the White House, which was organized with the help of Huffington Post and Slate magazine.
All candidates were filmed on a black background and all had to respond to questions related to today’s hot topics, including education, the war in Iraq or the health care system.
Visitors of the site (http://debates.news.yahoo.com/) were encouraged by Charlie Rose, the host of the “mashup”, to pick one candidate and then choose the topic they wanted to hear about from the presidential candidates. The questions for the Democratic candidates were posed via satellite link-up. A public survey was also available, where potential voters were able to express their preferences. As of the moment when I’m writing this article, 36 percent were in favor of Barack Obama and 32 percent in favor of Hillary Clinton. The rest of the candidates were all under 10%, with one exception: John Edwards, who received 12 percent of the online votes. Voting closes on September 21.
The 8 contenders were also interviewed by comedian Bill Maher, which was allowed to pose the Democratic Party members a “wild card” question. One of them surely made the only woman of the group laugh: "Why should Americans vote for someone who can be fooled by George Bush?" Hilary Clinton responded, “It was a little more complicated than that. I sought out expert opinions from a wide variety of sources. …At the time I made it very clear I was against a pre-emptive war.”
Maher also questioned New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on his views about American voters: "Do you ever, on the real now, feel that we are spoiled brats who can't take the truth and have to be lied to?". The governor’s answer was simple: "My answer to that is thank God for voters."
During the confrontation (which was not actually a real one, mush less a debate, considering the fact that all of the presidential candidates were scattered across the country), both Barack Obama and John Edwards have accused Clinton of taking contributions from lobbyists, a thing that makes her look closely related to the current administration.
Clinton responded: "I think it's a little inauthentic for people to say 'I don't take money from lobbyists' but it's okay to take it from their spouses, their children, their associates and from people that work for companies that employ them.”
"That is, you know, to me, kind of an artificial distinction."
Neither Mr Obama nor Mr Edwards accepts contributions directly from federal lobbyists but both take money from firms with lobbying businesses and from networks of friends and colleagues of lobbyists.
When Chris Dodd was questioned by Maher about his intentions regarding the legalization of cannabis, he answered that he favors the use of the plant for medical purposes and that he would also try to decriminalize that use in order to ease the pressure on prisons.
The sponsors of the show have declared that the main focus of the online show were the youngsters, the audience which might get bored really fast when watching a “classic” TV debate that lasts for hours.
Instead, Yahoo offered the young viewers the option to skip certain segments from the video, and go directly to what was of interest to them.
“Rather than expect people to sit down and watch an entire debate, this will let them interact with the information online,” Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, said.
"It is created for those people who live online, who want to be able to control the way they interact with the material, who they want to watch on which issue," she added.
"We give a whole new audience the chance to interact with the candidates."
A similar face-off, this time with Republican candidates, is slated for November 28.
