Watch the video

The scene is set in a diner: the main character ponders the choices on a jukebox while waiting for her spouse to arrive. Outside, their daughter hits a curb while trying to park.

Sounds familiar? Maybe not — because the final episode of the Sopranos has not yet been seen in Britain.

But the finale to the long-running mobster series shown in America earlier this month, amid bitter controversy among its fans, is the template for Hillary Clinton’s latest internet video.

Although The Times is not giving away the ending of the Sopranos for British viewers, Mrs Clinton has copied the last tension-building moments of the series before revealing her choice of campaign song for her presidential bid.

In the past month she has conducted an online poll on this issue, attracting more than one million internet hits and persuading many voters that she has a previously unsuspected sense of humour. The winning choice announced yesterday, Celine Dion’s “You and I”, is being seen as a lot less important than the way that the contest displayed an apparent mastery of popular culture and contemporary themes.

In yesterday’s video Mrs Clinton, like Tony Soprano, flicks through the juke box. The music that plays in the background is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” the same song that Soprano chooses in the show’s final scene.

Her husband, Bill, arrives and hams disappointment that she has ordered carrots, not onion rings — the choice of the Sopranos. At one point, actor Vince Curatola, who played New York mob boss Johnny “Sack” Sacramoni in the series, walks past their table and scowls in a menacing fashion not unlike that of Rudy Giuliani, the frontrunner to be Republican candidate in the presidential race. The Clinton’s give eachother a non-plussed look.

There is also a touching reference to their own troubled past. “How’s the campaign going?” asks Mr Clinton.

“Well, like you always say, focus on the good times,” replies his wife.

Michael Turk, who was in charge of Internet strategy for President Bush’s 2004 campaign, believes the Democrats have been sharper in the way they wield this crucial new political weapon. “We’re losing the Web right now,” he said.

No Republican comes close to matching Mrs Clinton’s campaign song poll or the popularity of another Democrat, Barack Obama, who has drawn hundreds of thousands of internet “friends” to his MySpace and Facebook groups.

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