One thing I’ve never seen as a Californian is the interactions that normal everyday people have with political candidates like they have in Iowa. Mostly that’s cause Democratic politicians know they need to win in Iowa to be nominated. But partly because of the political culture that’s here. I mean 1,500 people packed a hall tonight to hear John Edwards speak with almost two years to go before the general election. The rest of us usually would just ignore this stuff cause there’s no way to engage or make your own impact.
Here Jake Ludington, a geek working on Lockergnome, brings a small Sanyo Xacti camera and records some of one of those conversations and put it up on Google video. No mainstream video press was around.
If this was 1992 I doubt you would have ever seen this conversation shared with all of you. I recorded the entire conversation (Jake only got part of it, his camera ran out of storage space), will have it up next week, along with lots of intimate conversations. Oh, yeah, that is Chuck Olson filming for Rocketboom in the background of Jake’s video.
Note that the people asking the questions sound like “professional press.” But they are not. They are average citizens who got to come backstage before his townhall meeting. The culture in Iowa is to sit down with candidates and have conversations with them and triangulate on what they really stand for.
