Upfront disclosure—I'm supporting Barack. I'm familiar with a variety of things the campaign does online, but I was particularly interested in a nine-minute video featuring Iraq veterans from New Hampshire.

The video, "New Hampshire at War," starts with Will Dumukes, an Air Force Sergeant from Newbury, New Hampshire, who talks about his service in Afganistan in the aftermath of 9/11, the success of missions against terrorism there, and then the shift to Iraq. Senator Obama appears about a minute into the video for about 20 seconds, but the bulk of the first seven minutes focuses squarely on New Hampshire military people, who talk about the problems with shifting from Afghanistan to Iraq, as they lived and experienced it. The last two minutes focus on Senator Obama's opposition to the Iraq War, with testimony from the New Hampshire military members about their confidence in Senator Obama's judgment.

We talk a lot about how new tools empower individuals like Phil de Vellis to create and distribute videos that have a national impact, like the 1984 video. Perhaps a more subtle but significant phenomenon is illustrated by the Obama "New Hampshire at War" video: new tools enable local arms of campaigns to grapple with important issues in a very local way at minimal expense. The video looks professional, but was created by local campaign staffers. This video is the latest in a series of videos created by New Hampshire staff featuring local voters.

Increasingly, new tools are empowering local "amateur" campaign staffers to produce and distribute quality, local content centered on real people.