Obama through the Teleprompter

How scripted are Obama's speeches? An interesting photo from the campaign rally at UNCC, Charlotte, NC on election eve showing Obama through his teleprompter.

(photo property of MediaMensch Networks, all rights reserved)

My journey for the election season

This campaign season was a fun ride as a political blogger. Here are some articles from my mediamensch blog. The first article about the primary very accurately makes some predictions about the candidates, their strategies and tactics and choice of Vice President. This journey took me from a chance personal encounter with John McCain in January to being recognized on the cover page of Salon Magazines, OpenSalon.com website on election day.

"Editor's Pick" of my articles on Salon Magazine's Opensalon.com


Blog post from May 8, 2008

Andrew Kaplan Viewpoint - Presidential Primary and Social Media - Who is Engaging Best Wins!!

Here is a post about my encounter with Howard Dean and my discussion about a lack of a facebook strategy..Less than one hundred people turned out for this rally and only a about 10 were under the age of 30.
Blog Post from July 2008

Politics - Howard Dean "Register for Change"

Blog Post from January 19, 2008 (two days before the SC primary). This is my story of a personal encounter with John McCain and how I ended up asking him a question about technology and competitiveness among the members of the "crowd of supporters" at a town hall meeting.

Politics, John McCain and Me

March 28, 2008 On the trail listening to Bill Clinton campaign for Hillary, early in the NC primary. At that point NC was heating up as a battleground state for the democratic nomination. This was also the first time I actually was in the "press" area as a blogger. There is also a reference to George Clooney in this piece. I had worked on his film Leatherheads as a featured extra and was able to be part of his press conference prior to the movie release. It was my first time as a blogger being in an official press conference.

My first Press Coverage Bill Clinton Campaigning in NC

Election 2008 - My Political Blog Journey

Making the cover page of Salon Magazine's Open Salon on election day 2008.
"Talking to the Venti Voters"














Making the Most Read article list on election day 2008

Obama on Election Eve - A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall

My political journey started in January with a call from my friend and now blog photographer Maurice as we decided to go see John McCain. Although, traditionally, I was voted democratic for presidential elections, I thought McCain might be different and wanted to see him unfiltered, first hand. I somehow walked into a town hall meeting and ended up two feet from his stage asking him one of the 8 questions posed to him that evening.

The end of the election 2008 journey for the is today. On election eve, in the pouring rain at times, I saw Barack Obama as he is on the threshold of the US presidency. The crowd of 10,000 plus waited for up to 3 hours to see him. He was scheduled to speak at 5:30 pm..and the crowd endured an hour of rain and some early political speeches. You could feel history being made. It was an incredible opportunity to not only be there, but feel like you did some how contribute to making a difference.

Tonight was also an interection of some of my personal media journey in politics.. Politics has been a passion of mine for most of my life. I had grown up in suburban NJ with a rabbi who marched and was jailed with Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement and who railed against the Vietnam war each week. This past 10 months, I had the opportunity to listen to, shake hands with and speak with politicians such as Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton and Howard Dean. I worked for a day at the Obama campaign headquarters in April and could see and feel how special his organization was both by the people and its technology it used.

Late in August, a friend had told me about Salon Magazines's Opensalon.com website and community. As a social media expert, I found this to be a fascinating place where passionate writers could blog and post articles on subjects from politics to family. I started to write some articles about my political observations in North Carolina. To my suprise a few of them made the home page and were "Editor's pick". The opensalon.com editor, Joan Walsh, I found out later is a regular on Chris Matthew's Hardball show and in the last month has debated with people on the far right such as Pat Buchanan and most recently Tom DeLay.

This has been a great journey for Obama, McCain and MediaMensch and for all of America.