Is it just fun? It might be. But given the current right-wing noise about Obama being a Muslim, I'm not sure I like the implications of this video. It makes it look as if he is running for office in India. You and I both know that India isn't a Muslim nation, but how many Americans really make a distinction between one brown-skinned eastern nation and another? If it were any other candidate, I'd be sure it was just a game. In this case...

That was a lot of fun. Made me wish I had my tabla with me while watching it. Silly, way over the top, but fun.

My reaction is the same as the previous poster's; I know pretty much exactly what my midwestern in-laws would say to this video: "Damn immigrants! Barack Osama should go back to whatever Muslim country his family came from!"

With immigration such a hot issue, this isn't a good idea. Shame we can't just enjoy it though. Hey, I even recognized a few of the words! Bollywood watching must be paying off for me!

Good dig Andrew. Few points: it is again showing that we are too worried about ignorant people that we have stopped having fun. This is increasing the stress levels in all parts of our life. We are so fearful of everything foreign and brown that we have lost our sense of humor. It is a long campaign, policy discussions are endless, and everyone telling us that it is a dangerous world out there; this needs to stop. This is a fun video with no political implication at all; they even picked some of the stereotypical bollywood numbers and did some clever mixing.

I feel that all the campaigns against Barack trying to make us scared about him cannot work this time around. He will get his share of his votes; the other side will always have 20% people believing in this crap for various reasons: (a) they want the other democratic candidate to win, (b) they have another agenda that is not politically correct to say in the open, (c) they cannot find anything substantive against him yet. A big part of them also support Bush policies 80% of the time in Iowa. I was wondering if we should get a better sample of our population who has their head outside the sand and get some fresh air once in a while.

One of the more delicious aspects of an Obama run to victory would be the exposure, ridicule and defeat of many long time lingering fears and prejudices. Or for the glass half empty crowd and at a minimum, we will know where we stand.

See what you did Andrew Leonard! You let people know this existed and the video has been taken off youtube.com. Makes me wonder if Mr. Obama would have any better stance on censorship, new manipulations and all those Bush/Cheney skills than the Republicans. :-(

So wish you Americans choose presidents based on their sense of humour? Cant we petition Obama's campaign to bring it back?

Interestingly, the music used in this clip comes from the sweetly tart 2002 film, "The Guru," which starred Jimi Mistry as an accidental love guru whose advice actually comes from a porn actress (the delightful Heather Graham). Like Obama, Mistry is also biracial, with an Indian father and an Irish mother. He learned the lyrics to this song phonetically, as did Graham.

This is sharing honors with Mike Gravel's Rock as Best. Campaign Video. Ever. And the fact that it uses one of my top five favorite pieces of music doesn't have anything to do with that, of course.

I for one hope these kinds of fun, odd, quirky videos become more common. Let's face it, they're not any more relevant to real life than any other campaign video I've ever seen - wooden people staring at the camera and mouthing platitudes while inflammatory images are manipulated for the viewer. Who wouldn't prefer to watch trippy videos of dancing ladies inhabiting a candidate's jacket?

This ad, like the Gravel one before it, engages what I consider to be a very important aspect of a candidate's run that rarely gets acknowledged or talked about, at least in an honest way, and that's a sense of humor. I never thought I'd laugh in this way when seeing a political ad. If anything, the laugh has been of a nasty kind, and I wonder why a candidate would want to evoke that reaction. But this ad is bright and funny without any snide overtones, and I really like that. A lot.

We've got another year to go, for gods' sakes. I vote we dance more.

What a fascinating vid -- I'm still trying to sort that one out.

I'm sympathetic to the folks who are concerned about how this might provoke a "throw the brown people out" response, but let's be honest, they're not going to vote for Obama anyway whether this vid existed or not. As many commentators have noted, one of the striking elements of Obama's political rise is his uncanny ability to get people who have been afraid of/have made fun of other black politicians to rally behind him -- and passionately so. My 86 yr-old, white, grandmother from Mississippi is planning to vote for Obama--voting for him in the general election is one of the things she's looking forward to!

I wonder whether this mash-up feeds the "Benetton" factor behind O's success. Part of his appeal is precisely his unusual background -- he embodies "the colors of the world," and in doing so makes us feel better about ourselves as Americans. His success confirms our self-mythologizing about the US as a place of meritocracy, that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough -- even a biracial guy with a father from Africa and an arabic-derived name. If anything, the visuals that drive this video--especially the images of the Indian women singing *inside* of his mouth, making it appear as though they're providing him with the words he speaks, or "animating" his suit as they dance--reinforce the idea that when we vote for Obama, we vote for the world inside of him. That association is a frightening proposition if you are afraid of the brown people of the world taking over the US, or an exciting one if you're inclined to think of the foreign as simply an exciting commodity, which I'm inclined to think is another element of the appeal of "Brand Obama". Another possibility might be that if you feel like American politics are hopelessly corrupt and moribund (and there are plenty of reasons to do so), you might find that O's multiply-national background breathes new life into our own political dynamics, that other countries seem to possess better political processes than our own right now, and Obama might bring those to bear on our own degrading political topography.