Information generation shapes ‘08 race

This year’s presidential battle has been compared to every election held in the 1960s - a generational faceoff that will decide the course of the nation and one that’s been shaped by the Internet in the same way television affected the contests four decades ago.

If the final result Tuesday is anything like what polls are predicting, 2008 may be closest to 1964, the last year deeply Republican red states such as Virginia and Indiana backed a Democrat for president.

“Forty-four years ago in 1964, when I was a 9-year-old boy, my parents took me down to the circle in downtown Indianapolis to see Lyndon Johnson come to town,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat, introducing Sen. Barack Obama at a recent rally in Indianapolis. “He was the last Democrat to carry the state of Indiana. I thought I’d bring my boys here today to see the next Democrat who is going to carry the state of Indiana.”

Every four years, the politicians tell voters it’s a seminal election. This year they could be right.

Just as the 1960s races were defined by television - the Kennedy-Nixon debate steered voters toward the younger and more telegenic candidate, and the violence outside the 1968 Democratic convention was beamed into voters’ homes - now a generation later it is the click of a mouse and a YouTube video that puts voters in the middle of the political debate.

On its face, that seems to auger well for Mr. Obama, the 47-year-old former community organizer who as a relative newcomer to Washington could become the nation’s first black president. He’s facing Republican nominee John McCain, a 72-year-old senator who served decades in the Navy and a quarter century in Congress.

Mr. Obama has harnessed the strength of the Internet, which helped him build a base of support across the globe and take him from little-known candidate to front-runner for Tuesday’s election.

The Web has shaped the race, from the Internet video that started it all by depicting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a 1984-style oppressor to Obamagirl to the shocking sermons of Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Team Obama quickly mastered the Web campaign, using it to communicate directly with a growing group of fans and raising record sums of money from people willing to give $5.

Team Obama’s Internet group - dubbed “New Media” - was one factor in his defeat of Mrs. Clinton during the Democratic primary.

For his part, Mr. McCain has taken the slow-and-steady approach, building a campaign for the last decade, including his failed 2000 bid for his party’s nomination.

And despite joking about his own lack of technology savvy, his campaign has had some successes, including managing to mute criticism from conservative blogs by offering Mr. McCain up to them for regular conference calls and inviting them to join the candidate on the campaign trail.

In the general election, Mr. McCain fought back against Mr. Obama’s online dominance with “The One” - a satirical spoof Web video that compared Mr. Obama to Moses parting the Red Sea. He also released an ad arguing Mr. Obama was little more than an international celebrity, comparing the Democrat to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

On the strength of those two videos, Mr. McCain for a short period of time topped Mr. Obama in YouTube views.

But both men were swamped by Miss Hilton, who cut her own spoof Web video announcing that since she’d been dragged into the debate she might as well run for president on a platform combining both the McCain and Obama energy plans. She said when stacked up against someone from “the olden days” and “that other guy,” her appeal was obvious: “I’m just hot.”

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