Hillary Clinton Rides 'Sopranos' Coattails in Video Spoof of Finale

The two videos were watched nearly a million times on YouTube. Some 25,000 people suggested songs, said Daou, and more than 200,000 voted.

So far in this campaign season, dubbed the YouTube election, the most popular online videos have been the unofficial ones. Think of the Hillary-Clinton-as-Big-Sister video and the video of "Obama Girl" singing about her crush on Sen. Barack Obama. The official videos produced by the campaigns themselves haven't been as popular. For example, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's edgy and inventive going-on-a-job-interview video, posted early last month and viewed 181,000 times, has yet to catch much steam.

Clinton's camp is pushing hard for video cred, and yesterday's effort is proof. Forget that the self-inflicted analogy -- the Clintons as the Sopranos -- might be too irresistible for her detractors.

And for hard-core fans, the video might bring to mind the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In the show's third season, Carmela, wife of the philandering Tony, talks about her admiration for how Hillary handled her marital woes. "She's a role model for all of us," Carmela tells her gussied-up gal pals.

Dan Manatt of PoliticsTV.com, which creates news and satirical online videos, said Hillary's latest offering is a welcome addition to the throng of candidates' videos.

"It shows that Hillary Clinton is very adeptly using the Internet to humanize herself."

But Manatt, who's worked on online political videos since 1999, said the move could also be risky.

"The Clinton camp gets an A for effort and creativity and audaciousness," he said. "Yet the jury's out on whether everybody finds it charming that they're self-effacing or that they are in fact drawing a parallel that is really ironic and not flattering regarding what's seen as the liabilities of the Clintons. That they're very aggressive in trying to scare away donors from other campaigns. The perception that they engage in strong-arm tactics. Still, you have to hand it to Hillary. You can't get more Joe Sixpack than Tony Soprano."

Then again, nothing is more anti-Tony Soprano than Celine Dion.