As befits a Presidential campaign that's being run within a percentage point or two of perfect (though it's early and the bunker-busters have yet to be launched from the self-hating right), the people coordinating Hillary Clinton's outreach to the progressive blogworld are personally low-key. There are no grandiose schemes, no complicated maneuvers, no gee-whiz applets, no daily release of Facebook numbers and MySpace metrics.
Call it the Dao of Daou.
The candidate speaks for herself; the platform is powerful but invisible. The strategy is so simple, it's transparent, there for all to see. I'm amazed at how well Clinton is doing with the netroots crowd - a wonderful roiling mob I can claim tangential membership in - and how her campaign has moved the needle on the left. That's Peter Daou I refer to, as insiders know, the former Salon.com blogger and online coordinator in '04 for Kerry-Edwards. So far, Daou and his team have had a fairly singular mission - reclaim goodwill on the left for Hillary Clinton and blunt the phony right-wing talking point that had unfortunately infected many a groovy progressive (that HRC isn't electable).
It's working. Today I joined a conference call of lefty bloggers organized by Peter to announce a super-secret, mystery endorsement of Senator Clinton. So I hopped on like a good lad, and soon heard the Hardball-tested tones of Ambassador Joe Wilson describing why he - adored symbol of the angry, blogging left - was a Clinton man, through and through. I swear some poor soul forgot to mute and her "wow!" slipped through.
Now, the average American could care less about a July endorsement from some peripheral figure in the long history of the scandalous disaster known as the Bush Administration. Niger, Schmiger. Then again, the average American doesn't yet know there's an election on next year. No, that doesn't matter. What matters is that Wilson was direct in why he loves Hillary: he believes she's the Democrat most likely to effectively bring the troops home from Iraq.
Dig it. The Clinton campaign in a single call for a bunch of lefty bloggers went directly at the toughest single criticism lobbed by my lefty friends (some of who are to the right of me, by the way) at the Senator. They went right at it. A small chapter overall, but in the blogworld, it was basically the equivalent of George Brett pulling 98-mph Gossage heat into the upper deck (I was at that game, so I know). Via press release, it was just another endorsement. Via exclusive blogger call, it was a moonshot.
From the faux Sopranos "campaign song" video (note that we haven't heard the Celine Dion dreck since it was chosen by lurking Republicans) to the decision to speak at YearlyKos, Clinton hasn't wilted under the glare of the antiwar, angry left. She's gone at it, talked through it. Not the perfect candidate perhaps (but I'm an 80-percenter anyway, entirely jaded, ready to settle for the least disastrous choice) but the near-perfect campaign.
I didn't have time to write this up earlier, which is fine because I've had the chance to see the reaction. Taylor Marsh, for instance, has clashed with Dauo. But here's what she said today:
Clinton has come a long way in understand the blogosphere even in the face of huge criticism and sometimes out and out bias on the blogs...The '08 selection season is not over by a long shot and I am staying neutral in the primary. But the endorsement of Clinton by Joseph Wilson is a big step for her campaign. That Clinton offered the scoop to a group of bloggers shows just how far she's come and how far she's willing to engage a community, which on the whole is very critical of her on all fronts.
I have noticed some change out there. The rhetoric at DailyKos has lightened (especially in comments) and FireDogLake is positively pro-Clinton. Greg Sargent at TPMCafe analyzes the Wilson endorsement:
A few quick points about this. The Hillary campaign, which rolled out the Wilson news on a conference call with liberal bloggers, clearly hopes the Wilson endorsement serves at least the partial goal of winning over liberal activists and netroots types who might still be unhappy with Hillary for all the reasons you've heard repeatedly by now. Wilson carries great cache among such folks, who were energized by his speaking out against the administration and everything else that happened as a result of his protracted fight with the White House.
It's interesting, then, to note that the primary reason Wilson cited for backing Hillary is her view of what should happen after the war -- her awareness, as he sees it, of the need to end the war "in a way that preserves some shred of our strategic position in the region." This, of course, touches on the whole residual force debate, which ironically is something Hillary has taken heat for from bloggers and others whom the Wilson endorsement is most likely to impress.
More from Dave Johnson, Tom Burka, Steve Clemons, and Jeralyn Merritt.
