Well Done MTV/MySpace/John Edwards

The WaPo's Chris Cillizza chats with fellow moderator and MTV V-J SuChin Pak before the MTV/MySpace candidate forum this afternoon on the University of New Hampshire campus.

Noted: We don't normally "shoot" press, but MTV told us that we would be unable to take pictures of John Edwards while the forum was going on. So...

Edwards is the first '08 candidate to participate in the hour-long forum, which mixes audience questions with questions from the (far) larger MySpace online community.

All in real time. Live streamed on the web. Taped to play at 7pm EST tonight on MTV.

The debate format worked well. "Hip" debate staging aside.

And the audience questions were, for the most part, excellent. And unfiltered.

There might be hope for the next generation after all.

But only if the next generation realizes that they have to get their butts into the voting booth on election day "en masse" before campaign (political) folks will truly take their concerns seriously.

Because online chatter and hype doesn't count. Only the voting booth does.