...from Matt Compton at The Democratic Strategist, on the fact that thanks to newly-widespread means of communication (read, the internet), people can now choose to get past soundbites and take in more subtle messages from candidates:

To this point, Obama's big speech on race yesterday is getting widespread praise for its unexpected honesty and candor. Watching MSNBC, I heard it called unprecedented and brilliant, and was actually compared to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" address.

If you do a quick survey online (and ignore The Corner) the criticism, such as it is, boils down to one simple thing -- the speech was too long. It offered too many opportunities for negative soundbites. In fact, as I was watching the speech, one of the very first headlines that MSNBC put up read:

Obama: Racial anger is "real"

But that only remains true if the one way that people hear the words of Obama's speech is in a 20-second clip. The thus-far remarkable thing about this election is that it no longer has to be that way.

The campaign put the video of the entire speech on YouTube before lunch. Twenty-four hours after Obama walked off the stage in Philadelphia, this 37-minute address has already been viewed more than 1,000,000 times. As I write this post, 20 additional people are watching the speech, it's currently the "most-viewed video" at YouTube. 'd bet my lunch that another 1,000,000 people will watch this speech before the week is out.

...