My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: Matt Parker Political-Buzz.com

I had a busy day last Sunday talking politics with a number of different people across the political spectrum during three separate My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition videoconference sessions. The day started early Sunday morning when I found myself connecting from a Starbucks in San Francisco for a 9:00 AM PDT session scheduled with Matt Parker, editor for Political-Buzz.com. Matt started Political-Buzz.com in 2006 and has both founded and worked on several political blogs and web sites in the past five years. He connected from Florida and we were joined by Mr. Spike, Joe Giglio and Mark Impomeni who were all connecting from different locations around the country.

The topic was: General Q&A on the latest news and some predictions about the Presidential Campaign and it turned out to be a lively discussion about the hot topics/hot button issues in campaign.

We first discussed race issues and Obama's recent comment:

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know: 'He's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The questions raised were should McCain have taken a stand? Is Obama culpable? Why does it have to be race? An interesting conversation ensued and it came back to the fact that old habits are hard to break when it comes to politics (in reference to the Willie Horton incident) and the race card tends to get played.

We moved on to our support of the candidates. Joe was a Hillary supporter who has gotten over it and said the "dream team" ticket less likely as people get behind Obama. He added that you need to think one thing - January 2009 ends the era and McCain is more of the same. Mr. Spike likes McCain and his policies on immigration, global warming and the economy. He said Republicans are about spending less and taxing less and that McCain is the best choice. I support Obama and agreed with Joe on the goal to clean house and the mess created by "W" and get Obama into the White House. Mark dropped off early in the call so we didn't hear much from him.

We went on to other issues like the economy, the environment, offshore drilling, media coverage and several themes emerged.

• The economy is in poor shape
• Change is operative word in this campaign
  
• There's a lack of substance and credibility in the media coverage
• It's incredible that Iraq seems to be off the table
• Not a lot of discussion of the issues like what were doing in our ooVoo chat
  

For me, it was refreshing to feel challenged in my knowldege of the issues, my political beliefs and this session ultimately raised my awareness of the political process.

Check out Matt's weekly podcast available on iTunes politicalbuzz.com or follow him on Twitter @politicalbuzz.

UPDATE: I'll discuss the two other My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition video chats I had with In The Pink Texas & Every Dots Connects and Queen of Spain in later posts.

UPDATE 2: It's interesting to note that the mainstream media finally broke the John Edwards Sex Scandal today I recalled when we all signed off for this session Mr. Spike held up a handwritten sign saying, "Free John Edwards Love Baby." This story had already made the rounds in the political blogosphere and I cover it more on my Queen of Spain post.