"A more perfect union" closes in on 2.6 Mill YouTube views!!!!

How close? 2,591,401 views, only 8,599 shy of the mark. This thing is still taking off, after all, this is only Friday. Barack gave this speech on Tuesday. Perhaps it is slowing down a bit, as it had been viewed 1.6 million times in the first 24 hours I believe. That number has more than doubled though, as of 7:30 pm EST this Good Friday.

And as Rashomon diaried earlier, a new CBS/NYTimes poll found that 7 in 10 voters who had been exposed to Obama's speech, thought he did a good job talking about race and explaining his relationship with his pastor. That's a big 70% folks! Actually, coincidentally (perhaps) that's roughly the same percentage of voters that Barack won in his victorious race for the Senate.

http://www.dailykos.com/...

Keep pushing the video guys, e-mail it to your friends, or harass your fellow employees like I did. The good news is that our guy is going to prevail here. There is plenty of time for Obama's views on this to filter down to the "low information voters".  

And more than enough time for a more accurate picture of Rev Wright to emerge, should that be needed. This might have proven fatal perhaps, had it emerged a week before the GE, but that's not the case. And Obama has just proven that he isn't politics as usual, in the toughest of circumstances, that he does have what it takes to unite us. And he did it just the way he said he would, by telling us the truth. And that's what the electorate wants this time, clearly, given the YouTube response and the polls.

•  Wow

  Thanks for reporting this.  Obviously, interest hasn't abated.

  Is there a better copy of the video (higher resolution) than the one on YouTube?

  by Jonathan on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:14:15 PM PDT

  •  I don't know,

    I continue to be too cheap to abandon dial-up, so I had to catch a rerun of the speech to see it at all.

    by PLS on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:18:06 PM PDT

    •  Is it generational?

      I'm like Sigourney Weaver in Copycat so I gotta have a fast internet connection.

      by niteskolar on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:30:14 PM PDT

    •  Dialup Can Be Fun Though

      

      Here's the "A More Perfect Union" speech video (as someone suggested downthread)

      by JekyllnHyde on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:33:31 PM PDT

  •  Yes, on youtube

    someone uploaded a higher resolution version in 5 parts. You should be able to see it when you search for "a more perfect union." There are other versions of it too, some even have pretty high hit rates (at least one other in 100s of thousands).

    by xgz on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:36:18 PM PDT

    •  Cool

      There's a couple of versions on bittorrent...does anyone know if there are copyright problems with the speech?  I assume, if it's available on YouTube, that it's freely available :)

      by Jonathan on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:37:15 PM PDT

  •  Daughter said she and friends were

    having trouble with utube vid----stops and starts---blaming overload.  All her fellow teachers agree that it will be in the history books.
     I would say word spread and that speech resonated.  

    by dotster on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:40:36 PM PDT

•  Tip Jar

  YouTube link;

  http://www.youtube.com/...

  by PLS on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:15:41 PM PDT

  •  Thanks For This

    Anybody know where a transcript might be had?

    TIA.

    by mattman on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 06:02:20 PM PDT

    •  At Salon

      Obama's Speech on Race

      Because it's Salon, if you don't have a subscription, you have to watch a brief ad first.

      by Miss Jones on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 06:07:25 PM PDT

•  i dont know...

  i watched it three times at least. do you think that artificially inflated the numbers...

  by Liberal Youth on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:19:49 PM PDT

  •  nope - they only count unique IPs and full views

    so it's hard to inflate the count.  If anything, it's undercounting, because multiple people watching it from the same computer count as one view, and partial views don't count.

    by barath on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:42:48 PM PDT

    •  Partial views don't count?

      So anyone who started the video, paused it, and then used something to download the FLV for local viewing did not count as a view?

      by Cassandra Waites on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 06:01:48 PM PDT

      •  Not sure about that case, but that's more rare

        isn't it?

        by barath on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 06:10:58 PM PDT

    •  Another issue too

      Some colleges and university networks label whole buildings or all of campus as being the same IP address to anyone online outside the local network.

      It's possible that entire colleges' worth of students are being counted as only one or two unique views by youtube's counting method.

      by Cassandra Waites on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 10:56:18 PM PDT

•  I've listened to/seen the speech 3x and I

  still get weepy at the Ashly part. I am so glad to hear that more and more people are watching it. Thanks for the diary.

  by mommaK on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:20:06 PM PDT

  •  Oops...guess maybe I have too!

    by mommaK on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:20:45 PM PDT

  •  Interesting point,

    but don't you think that folks who are watching 2 or 3 times are the most likely to talk up the speech among friends and family? This is my guess, you guys can fill me in. I saw it only once and talked to everyone I could about it, personally.

    by PLS on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:25:47 PM PDT

    •  Yes I do and I am also telling everyone about

      this amazing and historic speech.

      by mommaK on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:31:42 PM PDT

    •  Absolutely

      I watched it, and probably ended up watching it around four times, but twice was watching with friends of mine, plus I posted it to facebook and talked about it with my mother who supports Hillary but is slightly wavering- she really liked his honesty in the speech, and said that Hillary seemed like she was often too concerned about the polls, where he wasn't.  My other friends are Obama-leaners who don't really follow politics closely.  Anyone who watches the speech a lot, just make sure to spread it to everyone you know.  And TALK about the topic, just like he suggests.  

      by wasthatrhetoric on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:40:19 PM PDT

•  You should embed the vid in your diary... n/t

  by Public Servant on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:27:51 PM PDT

•  I embedded it

  in a number of spots.

  by niteskolar on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 05:31:13 PM PDT

•  I watched it twice again today,

  not to mention downloaded it to my computer and converted it to an AVI file.

  I have a file question for any computer people out there. Well, a couple questions really:

  If I want it on a disc, do I have to get a DVD if I actually want it to play or can I use a data disc?

  And what file type does it need to be?

  by indiemcemopants on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 06:12:59 PM PDT

  •  how do you download a you-tube video

    using (say) firefox?

    Thanks

    Silvio

    by codairem on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 07:33:35 PM PDT

    •  I go to

      keepvid.com

      That will download it, you'll need an FLV player to play it, and then there are programs to convert it from an FLV file to something more useful.

      by indiemcemopants on Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 07:49:54 PM PDT