Well, people have been calling this the “YouTube Election” for a while, but now with the CNN/YouTube debate this seems to take a new meaning. The campaigns really are run by the internet now, and it has been proven with this new and unfortunately unsuccessful debate style. You can read all about the flaws of the debate here.

What I would like to focus on is the effect of increased interaction with the public and the candidates. In the past the candidates at debates would have questions written by whomever was hosting the debate, and the candidates would all have scripted answers. The YouTube debate tried mix things up by letting voters submit questions via YouTube. It fails in almost every way possible. The lack of scripted questions and answers caused the candidates to weasel their way out of the tough issues, and some of the questions were just terrible.

With things worse in this debate than previous ones, it makes me question whether or not the whole YouTube aspect will affect the elections.

Also, the “Ron Paul Effect” seems to show that the online community will have little impact on the 2008 elections. For those of you who don’t know, the “Ron Paul Effect” has to do with digg.com and other social networking sites. Whenever any article with Ron Paul in it is submitted it will generally get many diggs from Ron Paul supporters regardless of content (this actually happened to us with the Dr. Ron Paul, Your Table Is Ready post). Despite this, Ron Paul has about 2% in the Republican nomination polls.