Members of the staffs of John McCain and Barack Obama are holding an official debate on Twitter, presumably to attract the Tech-savvy Urban Early Adopter Influencer Creatives who have been almost entirely committed to Barack Obama since before the primaries. Mike Nelson (an "outside adviser" to Obama) and Liz Mair (the RNC online communications director) are fielding questions about their candidates with 140-character answers. But as one blogger said, "Conducting a debate via Twitter seems like a depressing acknowledgment that the soundbite is now the fundamental unit of American political discourse." CNN reported on the stunt in the clip shown below (though they get the dates wrong and say moderator Ana Marie Cox started Gawker, when in fact she edited the D.C. blog Wonkette).

Whether or not it's a symbol of the decline of political discourse, the debate certainly is a pain in the ass to follow. The Personal Democracy Forum, which organized the debate, encourages people to follow by watching a list of search results (which feels like any comment thread full of self-important randoms) or watching this page combining the Twitter feeds of Cox and the two debaters.