When Kit Seelye of the New York Times asked about our
thinking going into planning our first-ever online-only Candidate
Mashup, I told her that putting on a presidential debate these days is
a bit like being Elizabeth Taylor's seventh husband. You know what to
do, but you don't know how to make it different.
Well now, our candidate mashup puts you in charge of shaping exactly what
kind of viewing experience you want to have. For details on how this
will work, click
here.
Phase One of the Mashup was completed Wednesday afternoon when Charlie Rose
finished questioning each of the eight Democratic candidates, using questions from the thousands that were sent in to Yahoo!, Slate and HuffPo. Charlie's intimate, personal style was perfectly suited to the online universe.
And then, after questions on Iraq, health care and education (Hillary Clinton made news when she took a hard swipe at Obama and Edwards as "inauthentic" for slamming her for taking money from lobbyists while they accept money from the people who employ those same lobbyists), there was the "wild card" question asked of each of the candidates by Bill Maher, eliciting some of the most provocative answers of the day. Don't miss Bill grilling Obama on the contradictions in the Ten Commandments
or asking Chris Dodd about legalizing medical marijuana.
To catch a sneak preview of some of the video from the event,
read John Dickerson's account in Slate and see
our HuffPost Reports coverage of some of the questions by clicking here and here and here. Now that the Mashup player has gone live on Yahoo!, you can take control of designing the debate
you want to see -- picking and choosing what issues you want to hear
about and which candidates you want to hear from. Watch it all or
slice-and-dice. Dig deep into one issue - or put two candidates
head-to-head.
The questions have been asked. The answers have been given. The
video is categorized and coded. The rest is up to you. Get
ready to Mash.