Democrats in virtual Web site debateCandidates will participate from wherever they are on WednesdayAssociated Press
Updated: 2 hours, 26 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Imagine shaping your own presidential showdown, using candidates and their answers like building blocks that shatter the standard conventions of a televised political debate.
Yahoo! and the blog HuffingtonPost.com and the Web magazine Slate.com this week will let viewers assemble their own presidential confrontations. They can stack one candidate against another, or line them all up by single issue.
PBS' Charlie Rose will be the moderator and interviewer who will elicit the answer blocks in a series of interviews Wednesday with the eight Democratic presidential candidates. Rose will quiz each candidate separately, by satellite from New York, on topics selected by a vote of Yahoo! users.
Once posted on the three Web sites on Thursday, viewers will be able to edit to taste. Joe Biden vs. Barack Obama on the war in Iraq. Hillary Rodham Clinton on health care, education and the war. All eight on a "wild card" question reserved for each one. And more.
Call it Web 2.0 politics. Or, call it what its organizers do - a "mashup."
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