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I meant to pass this along earlier but then forgot. Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan just reminded me.

Sullivan is right - viral video is going to make some candidates and break some candidates during the 2008 cycle. And no, people like McCain won't see this coming. But it is coming, and it is coming fast.

Not that long ago it was possible to get away with hypocrisy in DC. In Washington, the keepers of both the political and media cultures believe that, except for the most egregious cases, it is simply rude to call someone a liar. A wink, a nod, and an aside in a column most Americans will never read has been as far as they would go. Unless the story involves sex, of course. But that's "different."

But site like YouTube and software like the one running this blog put the power of information back into the hands of the people. Just a few years back it was blogs covering what was said on CNN. Now CNN is covering what's being said on blogs and uploaded on YouTube. Rather than simply reacting to the news, individual content creators on the internet are now making news happen.

Thin on this: The Swift Boat Veterans group that slimed Kerry did so without the benefit of YouTube distribution. Just imagine what that would have looked like had they been able to get their video straight to the masses. Just imagine how quickly the story would have evolved, with responses and counter responses flying back and forth. Kerry's decision to ignore the ads for those first few critical days? I tend to believe that approach would have been impossible had millions of links to the ad already been flying around the Internet. He would have been forced to respond. And that, I believe, would have made all the difference.

The bottlenecks on information still exist, but they exist in very different places than just a decade or two ago. That will inevitably force changes in both our political culture and institutions. It has happened before, and it is happening again, right now...

So yes, as they say... stay tuned...