McCain and the Internets

Having admitted he's a computer "illiterate," Sen John McCain (R-AZ) held a town hall Tuesday night via telephone. Mark Soohoo, McCain's deputy e-campaign director, drew guffaws at an Internet conference in New York when he tried to dig his candidate out of a techno black hole. “It’s a mistake to assume John McCain has no knowledge of this,” Soohoo said during a panel discussion with the Internet strategists of some other presidential campaigns. “You don't necessarily have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country,” he said. Tracy Russo, who worked for John Edwards, as an Internet strategist, responded, "You actually do,” suggesting that a person gains a certain frame of reference from being online. Andrew Rasiej, a Democrat and founder and executive producer of the Personal Democracy Forum, which was holding the conference, said later that Sen McCain’s lack of familiarity with computers and the Internet “shows he doesn't understand how the world works and that he doesn't understand what it would mean to be president.” McCain’s relationship with the Internet also stands in stark contrast to that of his opponent, Sen Barack Obama (D-IL), whose campaign has made expert use of the Internet for fund-raising and organizing and recently surpassed the 1-million mark of “friends” on Facebook. (Sen McCain has fewer than 200,000.)
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/mccain-and-the-internets/
(requires registration)