Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

Living in Boston means that I have been bombarded with political ads on tv due to Tuesday's primary election in New Hampshire. These extremely long campaigns is something very foreign to me. I'm used to 3-week sprints when election time rolls around, not year long marathons. Brittany asked if I wanted to attend a rally for Hillary Clinton who she believes strongly is the best choice for the next American President. The rally was in Manchester, NH only an hour's drive from here and I couldn't turn down a chance to see Hillary and Bill Clinton in person.

Having never attended a political rally in Denmark—Danish politicians just don't have the same star quality—I am not the best person to make a comparison between the two. The rally was as expected on some fronts and surprising on others. It was located in what seemed to be an airport hangar turned sports arena turned rally at Manchester Airport. Due to the massive traffic jams we arrived 45 minutes late, just at the rock band played their last song before Hillary went on stage. The place was packed.

Anyone entering the rally was offered a big blue poster that read "Hillary" in big letters. I politely declined as I wanted to take pictures during the speech and I still wanted to feel more like a spectator than a participant. After all, I am not a voter. With regular intervals people would start cheering loudly and wave their posters energetically over their heads. While these frequent breaks are a massive annoyance when watching televised speeches they are actually kind of fun when you're there. It doesn't matter much that your view is completely blocked by a sea of blue.

As I imagine any serious contender for the presidency is, Hillary showed to be a rock solid speaker. Her speech was a typical bullet point description of her political program, a speech I'm sure she's given over a hundred times now. There was no room for improvisation, even as a young man close to us finished Hillary's sentence "What American needs now is…" by loudly screaming "A WOMAN" (making the whole arena laugh) she didn't miss a beat.

Her speech was very predictable with a few surprises thrown in (to keep us on our toes I'm sure). My biggest surprise was that Hillary took time to talk about the Iraqi translators and other locals who are aiding the American war effort in Iraq. She underlined that it is the responsibility of the United States to take care of these people as American troops withdraw. A sensible policy in my mind, but not something I expected her to devote time to at a rally like this. Denmark adopted a similar policy when Danish troops withdrew, but not until after the media brought the issue to the public.

I had hoped that Bill Clinton would say some nice words about his wife, but that wish wasn't granted. Last week on tv I saw him talk about Hillary at a different rally, but Monday night was all Hillary. He kept in the background, alternating between sporting a giant grin and folding his hands almost praying. He looked like the uncle who was just happy to be there. I imagine it's very relaxing for the previous leader of the free world to be on the campaign without having any actual responsibilities.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone changing their vote based on one of these rallies. At the same time I don't think that's the purpose of them. They do give a strong sense of belonging to those attendees who are solid Hillary supporters. What matters is not what Hillary says, but that she took the time to show up and talk to them in person. That connection is important when trying to campaign in a country as big as the USA where it's easy for people to feel a disconnect with what's happening in Washington DC. In much the same way hardly anyone in Denmark knows or feel connected to the members of the European Parliament and the work they do.

See more of my photos from the rally on 23.

So it is surprising that the media-aware Labour Party has not made a move to reign in this new media, in fact it has studiously ignored or remained rather ignorant of its possibilities. Instead, the old-fashioned stodgy British Conservative party seems to have jumped on the new media bandwagon and actively leapfrogged the old media approach of Labour. Moving straight into the new media world of Internet video diaries, or videoblogs, Web 2.0 and grassroots narrowcasting. In fact it is telling to what extent Labour have missed the entire new media juggernaut ? the blogging community, for example, being decidedly off-message.

Trine and David Berry wrote an article on the Conservative leader David Cameron's use of web video. I missed it last month when it was published online. It's a nice run down of communication in British politics in a bite-sized format and it is all the more relevant considering Blair's resignation today.

The article poses some good questions that can bear deeper research. I'm hoping someone picks up where Trine leaves off. What caught my eye was the concept of authenticity. As the article points out Cameron creates authenticity (and there's no doubt it's orchestrated) through the use of hand-held camera, rouch edits and a lack of titles sequences, music or credits (example).

What is fascinating is the trend among videobloggers where authenticity is sought after using the complete opposite strategy (High Definition recordings, professional lighting equipment, fancy title sequences and credits with titles like ‘Director” and so on). If nothing else it is amusing that Cameron is trying to mimic the genre that a large group of videobloggers is trying to eliminate by themselves mimicking the television genre. It does pose additional questions regarding the motivations for seeking one strategy or the other among politicians and videobloggers alike.

Why does the politician think he needs to mimic YouTube videos to seem authentic? Maybe easy to guess. Why do the videoblogger think he needs to mimic the production values of a television broadcast to gain the same authenticity? Maybe not so easy to guess.

In an otherwise nasty US election campaign the tone of Dominic Sagolla is refreshing. He's created a jovial little song and music video called simply Vote John Kerry (via Eric Case). It's just a fun video urging you to vote for “Vote John Kerry, John Edwards, and their Democrat friends.” It's great that someone can still write happy-sounding songs, even if the topic is deadly serious.

At the same time Dom launched the site free.dom.net:

It's purpose, at this point, is to promote political, economical, and social ideas that promote individual freedom.

On the topic of videos Jesper Balslev has created a Flash video player. It looks pretty nice. To see a video you click the "url" button and type one of the file names in the list on the left in the box. Now if only he would use file names that are easier to spell than lecreuset…

And Americans wonder why the rest of us think they are a little bit weird: Yahoo News: Man Arrested After Leaving Small Tip (via Tian). I simply don't understand that American obsession with not wanting to tell a customer ahead of time what the price of an item/service is. How about adding sales tax to the price tags in stores, and get rid of mandatory tipping, people. You can then raise the wage of waitresses. Voila! Transparency for customers.

Today us in the European Union get to elect a new European Parliament. I did my civil duty as a member of a democracy by voting, even though I had to bike south to another city to do so. I suspect I would have been more annoyed by it had it not been a beautiful sunshiny day today.

Right now my tv tells me that 97% of the votes have been counted and it looks like the candidate I voted for got a place in the parliament. Of course I'm pleased when my party goes up by one percent. I voted for Margrete Auken — a pro-EU socialist. She's pretty cool and likes the enviroment which is a big plus in my book. Auken even has a weblog (powered by the open source software Wordpress). I don't know if she has stolen the idea from John Kerry — and earlier Howard Dean. Either way Auken's weblog is better executed for the simple reason that she writes her own entries. This brings forward the number one quality about weblogs: The fact that they are personal accounts, but your press secretary's account.

The big question today has been the election turnout. Only 47,9% voted in Denmark making this election look like an American presidential election. I would much prefer to have the 80% turnout that is the norm for elections to the national parliament.

The logo above was taken from the brochure “The European Parliament explained” (available in pdf format from the election website). Fortunately the European Union has a very liberal copyright notice which allows me to reproduce anything from their website as long as I acknowledge the source.