Intellectual Property Law

Surprise! Student Superdelegates Endorse Obama via YouTube

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

College democrat representatives Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel endorsed Barack Obama on Tuesday, using YouTube to unveil their preference.

"As superdelegates who represent college students, we support senator Barack Obama," Wolfe says in the video.

"Even though we heard responses in support of both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, there was one candidate who started out ahead, and never looked back," says Awais.

The two were among the remaining undeclared superdelegates being heavily lobbied by both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, as well as their supporters.

A previous Threat Level post reported that the two held out until now because they wanted to hold onto their influence within the Democratic party on behalf of their constituents.

But maybe there was also a more mundane reason -- they were busy replying to the 1,000 Facebook messages and 5,000 e-mails they received concerning their decisions.

Though Facebook has in the past tried to make special adjustments to its platform to accommodate the scale of political activities, the system obviously wasn't put in place here.

"Facebook even shut down our profiles because we responded to nearly every message that we got, and they thought it was spam," laughs Khaleel in the endorsement video.

[But] "We knew that this was a way to reach college students that was accessible to them!" Wolfe says.

See Also:

• Obama Campaign Urges Online Audience To Lobby Superdelegates In ...
• Students On How Social Networking Is Transforming Politics
• Clinton Resorts To PowerPoint
• Anonymous Blogging Superdelegate Is Former Richardson Field Director
• Obama Uses YouTube To Lobby The Public After Losing Pennsylvania
• Spotlight on the Superdelegate System II

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 14, 2008 (boomark / email).