Here's the clip of Andrew Rasiej interviewing Elizabeth Edwards at home via Skype video Monday at PdF2008, when John Edwards happens to drop in. They discuss the impact of the Internet on politics 2008. Edwards says "It's the only reason Barack Obama isn't taking public financing," noting that it's given him a huge fundraising advantage "over Bush"--a slip quickly corrected by Elizabeth, who you can hear chortling in the background. Andrew tells John that the "internet community really loves your wife," to which he responds, "I know, so do I!" And then Elizabeth comes back on to say goodbye, noting, "PdF is enormously important in building this community--thinking about how we can use it [the net] is enormously important."

A little background for viewers who weren't there. We had originally planned to host Elizabeth Edwards for a live, in-person conversation on Monday morning, the first day of PdF2008. Unfortunately, thunderstorms up and down the east coast on Sunday led to the canceling of all the flights up from North Carolina. We revamped the Monday plenary schedule on the fly, moving various speakers up, including the internet campaign directors roundtable, which had been set for 5pm. When it became clear that Elizabeth couldn't make it to NY, we scrambled to figure out a solution. Luckily, we found someone who could go to the Edwards' house with a Mac, and that afternoon we tested out a Skype connection. Our tech team backstage worried, for all sorts of reasons, that the sound quality would be terrible, or that the connection would go down. Indeed, at one point, Skype started to get wobbly and Andrew had to hang up and call Elizabeth back. But, as you can see, the live video interview worked perfectly, and, honest to god, we had no idea John Edwards was going to come home and walk into the picture. Talk about conference serendipity!

Andrew Rasiej | Barack Obama | Elizabeth Edwards | internet fundraising | John Edwards | pdf2008 | public financing
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