Politics go Primetime

So in case you happened to be flipping through any one of a number of different networks, you might have stumbled upon a little 4 million dollar project of Obama's. In one final attempt to expand the already sufficient gap in the poles, half an hour of primetime television was purchased for an infomercial. The ad consisted of many clips from speaches, as well as a live broadcast from Sunrise, Florida. Obama shared his plans for the countries economy and tried to sway whats left of the undecided voters towards the left and for change.
The commercial was a very interesting move by Senator Obama, especially so late in the race. Nothing like this has ever been done before, and the difference in both campaign's budget has become much more prominent. The tactic was very idealistic, and Obama can only hope to gain a few more votes in the next 5 days. Looking at the situation more realisticly, spending all of that money on those 30 minutes wasn't really that necessary. Yet we could see this kind of campaigning in the future, as it may in fact turn out very effective in a race that could end up much closer than some polls currently show.

Joe the Plummer is Real?!?!

During the Presidential debate, and throughout much of the campaign in the past couple of weeks, both candidates have been referencing some unknown, average "Joe" in order to try relate to the typical working-class American. At first, I was imagining some ideal american blue-collar man with a Chevy. I was under the impression that the candidates were using some ideal to try to connect with someone like Joe the plumber.
Apparently...he exists.
Now over the past week there has been non-stop coverage of this typical guy and what he thinks of the election and the two senators. It seems the media is taking a totally different approach on "Joe" than the candidates previously idealistic reference. They like to take a much more pragmatic approach and truly take Obama and McCain literally when they are talking about him. I didn't really think the media coverage was that necessary either.