Weekend Vid Picks: Your Week in Politics (Sigh)

We’re at that point in the election cycle right now when the sheer mention of superdelegates makes me think about leaving the country. But like it or not, the 2008 Democratic primary will continue to dominate the online video world. If only because the Internet needs something to talk about.

For example, this week anti-Clinton commentators tried to make Clinton’s struggles with a convenience store coffee maker into the 2008 equivalent of George Bush Sr. being stunned by a bar code reader (which, it turns out, was completely distorted). The evidence against:

So the woman needed more than a few seconds to figure out how to operate a coffee maker (and sometimes the buttons on those stick, and sometimes machines break — comment debate on these clips seems to circulate around these topics). It could easily be an innocent misunderstanding — really, this is hardly enough material for a mash up… Oh, who am I kidding.

Most of the online parodies circulating simply redub the clip with dynamic soundtracks, such as this one:

But YouTube user therudman exercises a bit of creativity by mashing the clip with Clinton’s 3 a.m. campaign ad:

And of course the whole thing winds back up on CNN, with the network reporting on its own clip going viral:

Meanwhile, one of the bigger virals to hit this week is The Empire Strikes Barack, a fast-paced Star Wars-themed collection of pro-Obama/anti-Hillary clips. Well-edited, but loses major points with a less-than-subtle use of After Effects to mash Clinton’s head onto Darth Vader’s helmet).

Anyone with a browser window at this point knows that Barack Obama, by and large, has won a landslide majority on the Internet. But that doesn’t translate to the reality of American politics, where he continues to struggle in connecting with blue-collar voters.

The Internet tends to create an echo chamber for political discussion, one that distorts reality for everyone involved. Including the politicians and their staffs, who spend just as much time reading these blogs and watching these clips as us.