Just How Low Will They Go?

Thirty-one-year-old Jin Chon is obsessed with televisiontalk shows. He starts each weekday morning with Barbara and the gang on "The View" and rarely misses his daily dose of Ellen and Tyra. Other favorites: "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood," where he luxuriates in the latest gossip. For Chon, there are few things more rewarding than flipping on one of his must-see shows and finding they've booked his favorite celebrity guest: Hillary Clinton. That happens a lot. In the past year, she has been a repeat guest on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," swooned over "Grey's Anatomy" star Patrick (McDreamy) Dempsey on "ET" and copped to a weakness for "Dancing With the Stars" on "Access." The way Chon sees it, there's no such thing as too much Hillary. "She has a great sense of humor and is totally engaging and willing to do fun things that you'd be, like, 'Oh, no, she wouldn't do that!' " he says.

So right about now is when you'd be thinking: "Dude, honestly. Get a job." He's got one. Impressive title, too. Chon is press secretary for specialty media for the Clinton campaign. He's the man behind the dozens of fluff TV appearances Hillary has made. He also angles to get her positive coverage in celeb mags like People and Us Weekly, where she sat for a lighthearted feature in which she made fun of her dowdy wardrobe.

Barack Obama and John McCain are also hustling spots on shows that usually stay clear of politics. Obama danced with DeGeneres, hugged the weak-kneed hosts of "The View" and let slip this bit of news on "Good Morning America": he's going to get a dog. McCain schmoozed with Regis and Kelly and won a write-up in Us when Heidi Montag, the villainess from the MTV reality show "The Hills," endorsed him. (McCain said he was "honored.")

Politicians and presidential candidates have long submitted to ritual humiliation on "Saturday Night Live," and happily take their lumps from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But that's different. Those shows are for the tiny portion of the populace heavy into politics. An appearance on "The Daily Show" is a badge of coolness in this self-conscious, New York-Washington media world: you have arrived.

An appearance on "Access Hollywood"? Not so much. And that's just the point. In a campaign where "elitist" has become a choice slur, the candidates are especially eager to win down-home credibility with this year's "It" demographic: "low-information voters." They are the opposite of Colbert's media-saturated, post-ironic followers. Overwhelmingly white and working class, low-info voters don't pay much mind to the hourly back-and-forth of the campaign, and don't obsessively check Google News for the latest poll results.

Most important to the candidates: many of these voters are, in campaign parlance, "swayable"—undecided and looking for a candidate to believe in. "People who most like [prime-time] entertainment programming don't strongly identify with being a conservative or liberal," says Marty Kaplan, director of the Lear Center on entertainment at the University of Southern California. They base their votes in part on the issues, but just as much—if not more—on how well they like the candidate.