There's a quote from the creator, "will.i.am" on the ABC News website:
See what I mean? 3.7 million views, didn't cost the Obama campaign a penny, wasn't even commissioned or anticipated by the campaign, and it's the hottest thing going right now. I don't think Paul quite gets how far this is beyond normal primary politics. This is not a normal race at all.A week ago the musical artist will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas put together a music video called Yes We Can.
Taking some of Sen. Barack Obama's speech following the New Hampshire primary, he set the words to music and got a number of celebrity friends -- including Scarlet Johansson, John Legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Herbie Hancock -- to be in it.
The Associated Press just moved a story noting that one copy of the video has been viewed nearly 1.9 million times. The wire service should have looked a little deeper -- another copy has also been watched about that many times. And if you add in the many other copies that have been posted, Yes We Can is easily up over 3.7 million views and is the most-watched YouTube video of the past week.
Its creator says he wasn't asked by the Obama campaign to do it. He made it, will.i.am told the AP, because when he saw Obama give the speech "it was as if he was talking to me."
Frank Rich points to the coming "Civil War" within the Democratic party when discussing this, and he's right. The only way that someone could match Clinton's incredible machine support is through something akin to a social movement, which is what Obama has built; but the only thing that could stop Obama's exploding social movement is the cold, hard, gimlet-eyed masters of the Democratic party machine.
They definitely want to.
But I don't know that they can.
And I'm not sure what that means.
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