I discovered, a bit belatedly, a true digital oasis a few weeks back, a place to sneak away from the din that is the unravelling of our global capitalist system. It's the truly addictive Twitter Election 2008 feed, the ultimate fix for the election news junkie. It reminds me of my days in the Reuters newsroom watching the Reuters Terminal screen as, every second or two, fresh headlines scrolled past as the big news stories of the day broke all over the world.

On Twitter, the cascade of "tweets" is of a similar intensity. But instead of official news bulletins, on Twitter we get heartfelt opinions, wise-ass observations, notices about upcoming political rallies, illuminating links to mainstream news sources as well as YouTube and Flickr, and a good deal of obnoxious blather, one on top of the other. For me, writing from Rome, it forms the most complete picture of the campaign trail and how the world is interpreting today's hot air from the candidates, all in 140-character bursts.

To be sure, the Twitter community can hardly be called representative. It skews young, geeky, left-leaning and American. Twitter Election 2008 can be fiercely anti-John McCain the majority of the time, but it's critical of the hollow platitudes of Barack Obama too. And, Sarah Palin? Yikes. The Twitter community conducts a daily vetting of the most polarising VP candidate in recent memory, and the results are pretty darn ugly. You betcha.

For example, one of the big discussion points on the Palin Twitter feed the past three days is footage of a Palin rally on Monday. In the shaky video, a supporter appears to yell out "kill him!" after Palin brings up the extremely tenuous connection of Obama to Bill Ayers, the 1960s anti-war activist and now university professor. A fair number of Twitter users expressed outrage that, despite the utterance, Palin never missed a beat in her speech. It's anyone's guess whether she even heard it. Still, the Twitter discussion generates a fascinating debate that few in mainstream media are willing to discuss: do the candidates from both parties have a responsibility to speak out against hate speech on the campaign trail? Today, thanks in part to the fuss on Twitter, I see it's being picked up by the Los Angeles Times and others.

Taken as a whole, the legion of switched-on Twitter users are a valuable resource, providing us with the seldom-told story. For example, we get small behind-the-scenes details about a "wacko protester" arrested outside today's McCain-Palin rally. Another Twitterer offers up a helpful link pointing to a refreshingly articulate video critique from Matt Gonzalez, the running mate of independent party candidate, Ralph Nader, on last week's vice-presidential campaign. The days of giving third-party candidates any meaningful TV air time, I'm afraid, are long over. Hopefully, the advent of YouTube, Twitter and the next vital net community to come along will redress this slight.

The emergence of these digital forums makes me hopeful for the future of political campaigning. Twitter users are right to assert that third-party candidates have an opportunity to speak as well, challenging the often indistinguishable Democratic and Republican party machines. It is also right that we now have an influential community willing to vet every word the major party candidates utter, and to question when they fail to challenge their supporters' ugliest positions. Alas, neither Obama nor McCain treat these forums very seriously. We know this because neither candidate seems capable of answering the many detailed questions that fly onto Twitter every second - questions about future healthcare coverage, expected cuts in federal spending to help pay for a $700 billion bailout, or, just as importantly, how they plan to remedy a decade's worth of environmental neglect. Instead, the candidates roll out a new stump speech every day and the Twitter faithful buzz with further impatience. Yes, it's politics as usual, but as the Twitter election news feed ticks along second-by-second, you get the sense the clock is ticking on that too.

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Bernhard Warner, a freelance journalist and media consultant, writes about technology, the internet and media industries. He can be reached at techscribe@gmail.com

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