A new online video game based on Nintendo's Super Mario World has been developed in honour of US president elect, Barack Obama.Super Obama World takes a satirical look at US politics, with Obama collecting flags and dodging lipstick-wearing pit bulls, lobbyists and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.The game, which is free to play online, also features luxury store Saks Fifth Avenue, in a nod to reports that the Republican campaign reportedly spent more than $150,000 on Palin's wardrobe.Online video games are becoming as ubiquitous as viral videos; every time that a news story which captures the nation's interest emerges, an online game seems to immediately follow.Unofficial declarations of support for Obama such as Super Obama World are also a sign of how the internet has embraced Obama as much as he has successfully harnessed the power of new media technology.The same can't be said of the Republicans, who are more often than not the subject of online parodies. However, they are beginning to catch up, as the launch of a recent website demonstrates.A group of young Republicans has launched Rebuild the Party to make better use of the internet, improve grassroots support and, according to the site, "start building the future of our party".
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Barack Obama has given the world a behind-the-scenes look at his election night triumph by posting dozens of intimate photographs on his personal Flickr account.The series of 82 pictures posted on the Yahoo!-owned website were taken in a Chicago hotel room as the Obama family waited anxiously for the results to come in on Tuesday night.Traditionally, people have had to wait for campaign teams to release one or two officially sanctioned photographs to newspaper wire services, or to television networks, before they are given an insight into the inner turmoil, jubilation and relief experienced by the successful candidate.The move is a sign that Obama will not abandon the successful digital strategy which helped get him elected and gave millions of people, in and outside of the US, a sense of personal involvement in his campaign.Obama has already launched the official website for his transition to the White House, inviting users to send in their ideas for the future of the country.Obama's team is hoping that the website will harvest tens of millions of e-mail addresses while giving people a sense that they have a stake in how he will govern.In what other ways can Obama bring his presidency closer to the people by harnessing the power of digital? Live webchats? A live webcam in the Oval office. Perhaps this last one isn't such a good idea.Maybe they could install one in Obama's basketball court instead, which he is expected to build once George W. Bush's bowling alley has been ripped up.On the subject of Dubya, I caught Oliver Stone's biopic of the 43rd President over the weekend. Unlike Stone's other political epics on JFK and Nixon, W is played for laughs and very similar to one of my all-time favourite films, Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.It's pretty good, thanks in no small way to Josh Brolin's turn in the title role, who portrays Bush as a man shaped by rebellion against, and a desire to impress, an unforgiving father. Surely, an Oscar nod beckons for him.The most striking aspect of the film, however, was the surreal feeling that the Bush presidency is part of some by-gone, long since forgotten era. And yet he is still officially the President until January.It just goes to show how much of a watershed moment in all our lives Obama's victory already represents.
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US rapper Will.I.AM's involvement with the Obama campaign is well-documented, but could the UK hip-hop scene have the same positive impact on a general election in the UK?East London-born Dizzie Rascal seems to think it could happen. The only question is - who will the 'Boy in da Corner' lend his support to?
The brother of the high-powered Hollywood agent who inspired Jeremy Piven's brilliant character, Ari Gold, in the HBO series Entourage, has been named Barack Obama's White House chief of staff.Rahm Emanuel accepted the position as Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff yesterday. The 48-year-old congressman is a hard-nosed veteran of the Clinton White House who has the nickname 'Rahm-bo'. Time has the full story.His youngest brother Ari Emanuel founded Hollywood's Endeavor talent agency, providing the basis of Piven's Emmy award winning character Ari Gold, who popularised the catchphrase, "Let's huge it out. b*tch!".If like me you are fascinated by the brash reputation of the real-life Ari Gold, I have found a TV interview of him talking on a US chat show. Fast forward to 20 minutes and 55 seconds and you will see him talking about why he joined the entertainment industry.In another TV connection, older brother Rahm is the inspiration for Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman on The West Wing. Here's a flavour of what might be in store for staff at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: I've just finished catching up on the latest episodes of Entourage, which just gets better and better despite being in its fifth season. I was pleased to hear the other day that HBO has commissioned a sixth season of Entourage. As jobbing actor Drama would say: "Victory!". Here's a small piece we published on Brand Republic about the Obama campaign's digital strategy and chief strategist, David Axelrod. Vote in our US election poll - will Obama change America's global brand image?
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I stayed up through the night watching the election coverage, eventually going to bed around 4.40am, only to get up for work at 6.20am.Without wishing to descend into cloying, mawkish sentiment, it's hard not to feel energised by Barack Obama's historic US presidential election victory. Or it might be the strong coffee keeping the tiredness at bay. It's still the morning after all.I'm staggered not just by the fact that America has elected a black man to be president, but also at the country's enormous capacity for renewal.And it wasn't even close. Obama triumphed in pretty much every battleground state that was still in play yesterdayHe has won Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and Indiana. This string of impressive victories shows just how good the Obama campaign and its ground organisation have been.There's a lot of hype in the press about how race relations in the US will be profoundly changed forever by Obama's victory.When you consider that never again will anyone be able to tell a black kid that blacks don't grow up to be president, and that a child born this year will grow up not realising that it is unusual for a black man to be president, it's difficult not to buy into the hyperbole.On the subject of race relations, what happened to the Bradley Effect? Obama won white men 57-41 - that's five points higher than Bush managed in 2004.So much for the idea that this election would expose America's dark racist underbelly. I wonder if the European commentators banging on about the idea will now ask if Obama's ascendency to the top office in the land would have been possible in the UK, France, Germany or a country like it?Watching the TV in the early hours, I caught Obama's victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago live. Even by his own standards, it was inspirational and moving.McCain's concession speech was also impressive for the gracious manner in which he accepted defeat as well as his honesty.You a get a real sense that he feels the Republican campaign made serious errors and that if he could go back and do it all again, he would have picked someone other than Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Here are the videos of both speeches:
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Barack Obama has beaten John McCain in the early vote in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, by a margin of victory of 15-6!Yes, that's right. Only 21 people voted. Last time around, George W. Bush won. I'm not sure if it's significant, but along with the electoral college system, it's another quirky feature of US presidential elections. Time have the full story.Less than 24 hours to go before we find out which candidate for the American presidential campaign will lead the US and the world.I hope the polls are right and Barack Obama is carried home by an historic turnout. Not because I've succumbed to his legendary charm, but because as the only politician in the world who can prompt mile-long queues in European cities, Obama may get a more favourable response next time he wants Europe' help.If you believe as I do that America is the world's last best hope, Americanism and everything it stands for will be a far easier cause to sell to the world. And of course, it would be great to see a young black man in the White House.Like many, I have reservations about Obama. He's clearly highly talented but inexperienced and as someone who believes in economic liberty I don't like his protectionism. I fear that his extra regulation will cost jobs. Equally, I think McCain would make a good president, particularly on foreign policy and green issues. He was one of the first politicians on the Right to engage proactively with the issue of climate change.He also understood, unlike the present incumbent, how America's moral authority was severely undermined by Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and argued strongly to outlaw the torture of terror suspects. But McCain's campaign began unravelling with his choice of running mate. The choice of Sarah Palin looked clever at the time, but produced only a short-term bounce.Palin made it hard for McCain to argue that he was not a "core" conservative or, indeed, to attack Obama as inexperienced. His mishandling of the economic crisis and the congressional row that followed finished him off.Obama's chances were also greatly enhanced by the way he leveraged new media and the heavy artillery of TV campaigns. His campaign shattered records by raising more than $640 million (£405 million) and through the deployment of an army of 1.5m volunteers.The only thing that appears to stand in Obama's way now is the so-called Bradley Effect. Grey New York has produced a brilliant poster campaign designed to neutralise the potential conflict it can produce in voter's minds when they enter the polling booth.While watching The Daily Show on More4 last night, presenter Jon Stewart mentioned this to Obama in a live interview. Obama was unruffled and in a witty aside suggested he might have the same problem when he enters the polling booth to vote. I think Obama's right - the Bradley Effect won't decide this election.Of course, we're guaranteed a historic result whatever the outcome. If the Republicans win, the US will have the oldest president it's ever had and the first female vice-president.And we already know the footnote in history Obama will leave if he wins. I hope it's the latter.
As the candidates madly criss-cross the country in one final effort, here are some of the ads filling US airwaves as the election enters its final days.This been my first blog post in two weeks, which is regretful as I've been pretty good at keeping the momentum going since I began Electioneering Stateside in June. Annoyingly, I had to have an operation two weeks ago, but I'm almost back on my feet now and able to rejoin the blogosphere during the final countdown via the wonder of a wireless laptop connection.In the last two weeks, nothing has changed my mind about the outcome of the election since I said on October 7th that the US appeared to be on course to elect its first black president. It appears the die was cast in this election a month ago.Obama continues to enjoy a commanding lead in the polls - 52%-43% in Gallup's likely voter tracking poll, 51%-46% for Rasmussen's and 54%-43% in ABC News's.But, polls can be wrong and if there's one thing this election has shown; it is that the unexpected does happen. So can McCain imitate those great entertainers from North-East London, Tottenham Hotspur, and mount an astonishing comeback via Saturday Night Live?There was one nerve-jangling moment at the weekend for Obama with the revelation that his Kenyan paternal aunt, Zeituni Onyango, was living in Boston in contravention of a deportation order. Immigration is an issue that the Republicans believe could theoretically draw votes away from Obama.Then there was the ad (shown below) paid for by Pennsylvania Republicans, that broke McCain's promise not to make an issue of Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who is shown thundering "God damn America!" But none of it has stuck as Obama repeatedly rams home the importance of actually voting in one of his final messages. It's a message that Hollywood has been gladly supporting, as you can see from this ad, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and basically every other celeb on the planet.Returning to the crystal ball, I think it will be closer than pollsters are predicting, but not even Harry Redknapp can resuscitate the Republican campaign.Meanwhile, here are two of the most recent Democrat and Republican TV ads currently vying for votes:
It's the sort of magic Hollywood movies are made of...one minute average Joe is playing football with his 13-year-old son outside his home...minutes later...he becomes a national celebrity and symbol of the American working class.The average Joe who has been thrust centre stage in the US Election is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, an employee of a small plumbing and heating company in suburban Toledo, Ohio, who was mentioned 26 times during this week's televised presidential debate, while the war in Iraq received only six mentions.Before the debate was even finished, three local television stations had parked live satellite trucks outside Joe's home in Holland, Ohio, and the networks were rushing to interview him.Joe's instant celebrity is a sign of how the election has become dominated by the financial fears of ordinary Americans.On Sunday, he was playing football with his son outside his home, when Obama suddenly showed up to campaign in his neighbourhood.As Wurzelbacher watched his neighbours become star-struck, he became enraged and confronted Obama. "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" he asked. Obama told him, "It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you -- that they've got a chance at success, too."Good for him I say. During Wednesday's debate, Republican candidate John McCain lashed out at Obama for fomenting "class warfare" against Joe.But that was just the beginning for Joe, whose life is becoming eerily like the film Edtv, in which Matthew McConaughey plays a character who life is thrown into chaos when he agrees to let a TV show follow his every move 24/7 (if you haven't watched Edtv it was unfairly overlooked by critics on release if you ask me).After Joe went to a gym yesterday morning, he returned home to find 21 reporters camped out in his driveway. An Internet company, Cafe-Press.com, was already selling Joe the Plumber T-shirts, baseball caps, buttons and yard signs.Along with the role of the internet, Joe could end up being one of the most influential forces in this election. Never one to miss an opportunity, McCain -- who was in apologetic mood on David Letterman's The Late Show last night as he made his long-delayed appearance after cancelling a scheduled appearance last month -- has released a TV ad featuring Joe.You can watch the ad below. It's pretty good.
John McCain fought back in the final presidential debate last night with a back from the dead performance not seen since Rocky Balboa took on Apollo Creed in the first Rocky movie, but was it too little, too late?The Republican nominee distanced himself from Presidential Bush, drew contrasts with Barack Obama on taxes and appeared confident in his answers. He came out fighting, but managed to avoid the mad-dog aggression which has let him down in recent weeks.But despite a good performance in what everyone is saying was the most entertaining televised debate of this election, the US media has declared Obama the winner after instant polling showed him winning the debate. It seems to me that commentators have grown so accustomed to lauding Obama that they are now on automatic pilot.The big question is whether the debate will give the McCain campaign a much-needed boost. Given that McCain is trailing Obama by more than seven points in the polls with less than three weeks to go until Election Day, perhaps a more apt question is whether there is still time for McCain to get back in the game?The Wall Street Journal has published a very interesting piece on how the 2008 election is the most negative since the dawn of the television era and why McCain's negative campaigning has done him more harm than good. Click here to read the piece.Al Jazeera English channel has uploaded a video on YouTube, featuring vox-pops with US voters at a Republican rally. Some of the views expressed in the video are pretty shocking, illustrating how much fear, insecurity and prejudice exists among some sections of US society. As one elderly US voter says of Obama: "I'm afraid if he wins, the black will takeover." You can watch the video below.Click here to **vote** in Brand Republic's US Election poll.
John McCain desperately needs to land a knockout blow in the third and final televised presidential debate tonight if he is to beat Barack Obama to the White House.McCain is promising to "whip his you-know-what" and transform a race now pointing towards a resounding Democratic victory.Last night a CBS/New York Times poll showed the Democrat surging to a 14-point lead, the biggest margin so far.Given how far behind the Republicans are in the polls, McCain might have trouble distinguishing Obama's "you-know-what" from his elbow or any other part of the anatomy.McCain might be well advised to get tough with his running Sarah Palin as well, who has been reluctant to back down from her attacks on Obama's character. The attacks have backfired on the Republicans, succeeding only in making the party look nasty.US papers and blogs have gossiped that Palin feels the election is already lost, and wants to be remembered going down fighting, as she has her eye on running for president in the next election.McCain, on the other hand, is mindful of his reputation as the king of the comebacks at the ripe old age of 73. He will also want to be remembered exiting the race for the White House with dignity, instead of the bitter and highly personal attacks led by Palin last week. With this in mind, it will be fascinating to see how McCain approaches tonight's televised debate.Click here to **vote** in Brand Republic's US Election poll.McCain hasn't released any new ads in the last few days, in fact he held a fund-raiser this week with Palin aimed at generating $7m.Obama, flushed with dollars, launched a new TV ad in the last 24 hours on tax cuts. In short, it's very very good.
The McCain campaign has done the equivalent of what they call in the newspaper business a "reverse ferret".With just three weeks to go before polling day, the Republican presidential candidate is softening the tone of his rhetoric and introducing a more light-hearted approach.On Thursday McCain will appear on the Letterman show and The New York Post's Cindy Adams is reporting that Sarah Palin will do Saturday Night Live on the 25th, spoofing the Tina Fey spoof.This isn't going to change the election but should be pretty funny. The big question is whether the crowd laughs at or with Palin.So why the about turn? It comes after a week of increasingly nasty rallies in which McCain and Palin hammered Democratic rival Barack Obama over his "association" with a 1960s-era radical.The attacks culminated in a TV ad, called 'Ayers', but it failed to improve McCain's standing in the polls. You can watch the ad below. The Republicans now face a seemingly near-impossible task over the next three weeks. McCain has to claw back at least a six point deficit, while the Washington Post poll has the gap at 10 points. That's no mean feat.As I've said before in this blog, I'm not a great believer in polls, but even if they are not accurate, for good or ill, they influence how the media covers the race and that in turn influences voters and campaign strategy. So in this respect they are important.Click here to **vote** for who you think will win the US Election.
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Barack Obama emerged as the winner of the second televised presidential debate, in which John McCain had me thinking of Andy in Little Britain.A calm and unruffled Obama kept McCain at arm's length as the Republican failed to land a succession of blows. The US media was unanimous in declaring Obama the winner.There was also a bad moment for McCain when he referred to Obama in a dismissive manner as "the one", a phrase some commentators seized on as a racial slight.Talking about a Bush administration bill, McCain gestured towards Obama and said: "You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one."Whether or not you view the comment as racist, it certainly gave the impression that McCain had lost his composure, which is not good when the country is the throes of an economic crisis. By comparison, Obama came across as confident and assured.There's little doubt now that McCain's campaign is running into trouble. And call me flippant, but I couldn't help thinking of Little Britain's Andy and his I want "that one" catchphrase.Here's a quirky story for those interested in the current fad for researching family roots. According to genealogy boffins at Ancestry.com, Sarah Palin is distantly related to the late Princess Diana and late US President Franklin Roosevelt.This is not the first story of its kind after Lynne Cheney revealed last year that she had discovered while tracing her family roots that her husband Vice President Richard B. Cheney was a distant cousin of Obama. Other researchers discovered Obama is distant cousins with actor Brad Pitt.If you had to take your pick between being related to Diana or Pitt, as a bloke I know who I would like to be sharing my genes with.In my last blog post, I stuck my neck out a bit and said that it was difficult to see how Obama could lose the election after recent economic events tipped the election his way.There was some disagreement over this so I've started a poll on Brand Republic where you can vote for which candidate you think will win next month's election. Click here.Obama is continuing to outspend McCain by a significant margin, according to the latest reports. Obama was outspending McCain by a ratio of three-to-one and the trend continued this week.Both candidates released ads following the televised debate. Obama unveiled an ad on national cable TV that used footage from the debate, while McCain is up with an ad accusing Obama of lying to defend his "extremely liberal" voting record. You can watch both ads after the jump.On a lighter note, Paris Hilton has appeared in another amusing skit for Will Ferrell's comedy website funnyordie.com, this time with Martin and Charlie Sheen. Watch it here.
The US looks increasingly like it is set to elect its first black president and it is difficult to see how with less than a month to go until polling day that can change.John McCain abandoned his campaign in Michigan at the end of last week. According to the daily tracking polls, Barack Obama now has a seven-point lead there, with 17 electoral votes written off for the Republicans.In Ohio and Nevada, both critical swing states, Obama is now sporting significant leads. In Ohio it's 2%; in Colorado it's 4.4%; he even has a 3% lead in once un-winnable Florida. He also has a surging 5% in Minnesota.It's incredible how unexpected events change the direction of the election. Before the devastating economic events of the past two and a bit weeks, McCain was looking good and it appeared that his perceived strength on the economy coupled with Obama's inexperience would play into the Republicans hands.Ok, I'm sticking my neck out here, but fast-forward to this week and it looks as though the economic crisis may have tipped it the Democrats way. And the crisis is not over yet.Did you see the amazing Sarah Palin and Joe Biden TV clash from the end of last week? Both vice-president nominees put in ticket enhancing performances, but if pressed you would probably declare Biden the winner on points after twelve bruising rounds.Palin did what she had to do to stay alive and not damage the McCain ticket, while Biden took the fight to McCain with gusto, erasing memories of Obama's underwhelming performance in the first presidential TV debate.On the ad front, both candidates have launched new personal attacks ahead of the second presidential TV debate today at 0200 GMT from Nashville, Tennessee. You can watch the ads below.McCain's commercial is called 'Dangerous': Obama's spot is called 'The Subject':
There have been quite a few attempts to give frustrated election watchers outside of the US a vote in the election, but The Economist's new poll is the most comprehensive effort to date.The Economist has redrawn the American electoral map to give all of the world's 195 countries a say in the US presidential election.The system duplicates the quirky, 200-year old electoral-college system used to represent US states, with each country allocated a minimum of three electoral-college votes with an extra vote allocated for every 700,000 or so of population.It's well known that Barack Obama has strong support across Europe so it will be interesting to see whether the trend is found around the world.If want to have your say, you can visit The Economist's online voting booth and poll your vote between now and 5pm EST on November 2.As Daniel Franklin, the executive editor of The Economist, says: "America's presidential campaign has fascinated people around the world. Maddeningly, though, only Americans get to vote. But what if the entire world had a say?".In the US, John McCain is attempting to recover the momentum from the recent Republican convention and the Sarah Palin phenomenon with yet another TV commercial attacking Obama. Having experienced a boost in the polls, McCain has lost credibility following last week's gaffe, in which he said the "fundamentals of the economy are strong" just days before the collapse of the 158-year-old investment bank giant Lehman Brothers.Amid the economic gloom, the ad spending by the US presidential nominees is giving the media industry a timely lift.In August alone, both candidates spent more than $90m.
To address the criticism that Barack Obama doesn't tell voters precisely how he will help them in the economic downturn, he has released a two-minute ad highlighting the specifics of his plans. At the same time, John McCain has launched a 30-second commercial to camera on the same subject.McCain's ad, in which he signs off with a knowing smile about his war record, is one of his better ads, while Obama's is overlong but effective.It's hard to tell if they will have an impact on independents and swing voters, but at least Obama is addressing criticisms in his commercial, while McCain's effort feels glib to me. Meanwhile, every politician in Washington must be frantically changing the security on their email account at the moment after the account of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin was hacked into.Following the hack, screenshots of Palin's messages, inbox, pictures and address book were posted to the Wikileaks whistle-blowing site.Apparently, the attackers got round the password resetting system of Yahoo's e-mail service, overcoming security questions using details about Palin's life pulled from sources such as Wikipedia.Unfortunately for Palin's detractors, her inbox was controversy free by all accounts.
Darren Davidson
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