The Meaning of Massachusetts

It seems that everyone has an immediate opinion as to what the Massachusetts Senate results mean. Everyone is interpreting the Massachusetts results as a wake up call but different people are taking different lessons from it. Is anyone advocating anything different today in response to the results than they were before the loss?

Many on the left are saying this means that Obama should move further to the left. Peter Daou says the lesson is that the Obama administration should pay more attention to bloggers. Moderate Democrats such as Evan Bayh say the lesson is that the party should be more moderate. Conservative politicians and pundits argue this shows the Democrats are too far to the left. In other words, everyone seems to be saying the lesson of the election is exactly what they have been saying all along.

While there is obviously no one answer, I think the problem comes down more to being able to put out a coherent message and find a way to get voters to vote based upon the actual facts, not what is being said on Fox and right wing talk radio. Neither the moderates nor the more liberal Democrats stand a chance when people think that a centrist administration such as Obama’s borders on Marxism.

Beyond this we need more time to analyze the results to really say whether a more liberal or moderate message would win. So far analysis of polls do show that lack of enthusiasm among progressive voters did hurt Coakley.  Health care was a factor, but partially because some voters didn’t think that the health care legislation goes far enough. Obama says that voter anger and frustration were factors.

All is not lost even if Republicans now have a 41-59 “working majority” in the Senate. Democrats still hold the House and White House. What happens in November will depend largely upon what they do with it (and how the economy does as most voters have too short a memory to remember who wrecked the economy).

Changes in the Blogosphere

While traveling last weekend I  lacked the time to post as often as usual and missed some topics. Sarah Palin’s announcement sucked up most of the news last week, but before that there was one other item which was discussed on many blogs. The post attracted considerable attention in the blogosphere because it was a topic of interest to all bloggers–the blogosphere itself.  Laura at 11D discussed the changes in the blogosphere over the past six years and is not happy about many of the changes.

Laura writes that the old A-list bloggers don’t have the same influence as they had in the past:

People used to read the A-list blogs because they were first on the scene to tell us what the hot articles and issues were. But now we get that information from Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader. Does anybody still read Instapundit? Most of the A-List bloggers aren’t all that influential. When I surveyed key journalists about what blogs they read, they rarely pointed to the traditional A-list blogs. They preferred the niche blogs, which brings me to the next topic.

Her next topic is that “If you have a particular expertise and unique perspective, they you can quickly gain a following. Everyone else is out of luck.” I do often suspect that I established my own blog in the nick of time and fear that it would be harder to start a new blog today and achieve even the modest (by old A-list standards) readership I have. If someone is already famous they have a shot at becoming a famous blogger. Otherwise, unless they really have something unique to office, I fear there are just too many blogs, and too many competing sources, to easily get established. Of course as long as a blogger is enjoying what they do it might not matter that it could take a couple years to receive a significant number of readers.

One reason it might be harder for new bloggers is that “Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to.” Part of that is burn out. It takes more time to go through all the small blogs and find those which have a unique and quotable take on a story.The value of links, while helpful, can be overrated. Often a link from an A-list blog will bring in a huge amount of traffic for one day, but what really matters is the readers who stick around as opposed to reading one linked post.

A related problem is that there are fewer places that can drive traffic to the small blogs. The Daou Report, which later become the Salon Blog Report, first under Peter Daou and then under Steve Benen after Peter went to work for the dark side, helped highlight the posts of many small bloggers. This is no longer around but there are still some sources which do this. Sites such as Memeorandum and Megite include links to both large and small blogs discussing a story, but far more traffic goes to the headline stories than small bloggers. Real Clear Politics does provide a handful of links every day to small as well as large bloggers. I also have some additional aggregators listed in the links section.

Laura complains about Huffington Post, complaing that “It has sucked up all the readers. And HuffPo isn’t a proper blog. It is run by people who don’t link to other bloggers and do not get the old ways and norms that greased the system in the old days.” Actually I have on rare occasions received links from writers at Huffington Post. Other times I  have received traffic from links which people have included in their comments. I have no way to know if I receive more traffic thanks to such links or less due to Huffington Post sucking up readers, but I do not see their existence as a problem. She also sees Twitter and Facebook as problems, but while they might be in some ways competition I often receive traffic from people linking to me from both.

I generally agree with Laura’s comments on the problems with Link Monitoring:

In the past, I could easily figure out which blogs had linked to me and then send them a reciprocal link. For whatever reasons, Google Blog and Technorati aren’t picking up the smaller blogs, and I have no idea who’s linking to me.

Neither has been working well lately, but it isn’t simply a matter of missing smaller blogs. For the last few months Technorati has been missing the vast majority of links that I’m aware of, both from large and small blogs. My Technorati ranking has fallen from over 500 to under 200. While some of the sites linking here in the heat of an election year are no longer linking as much, there are also many blogs which I have exchanged links with over the past six months which are not showing up in Technorati at all. Using Google Blog Search has both the problem of many links being missed along with it adding a new link ever time a handful of blogs with links here enter any post.

Besides missing a tremendous number of links, Technorati rankings mean less as counting links from other blogs means far less than in the past. The idea is that the blogs with the most other blogs linking to them are the most influential. This misses the influence of a large number of forums, Facebook pages, Twitter comments, and links from other sources beyond blogs.

Laura notes that “Many of the top bloggers have been absorbed into some other professional enterprise or are burnt.” Ezra Klein (who himself has turned professional at The Washington Post) elaborated further on this further:

The place has professionalized. Talking Points Memo used to be some unemployed writer’s blog. Now it’s a significant media institution. Atrios used to be the only guy articulating a certain set of progressive frustrations with the media. Now he’s a fellow at Media Matters, a well-funded watchdog organization dedicated to tracking the media in excruciating detail. It used to be that people blogged in their spare time. Now kids graduate from college and apply for jobs as bloggers and, sometimes, internships as assistants on blogs.

This could be taken as good or bad by those of us who prefer our day jobs but still like to blog as a hobby. Independent bloggers are at a disadvantage compared to those who have the name of a professional news organization behind them. Being able to blog full time will also result in advantages. This could be a far better blog if it was my main job and not something done quickly throughout the day, but I’m certainly not going to take a pay cut of that nature.

The professionalization of the blogosphere also does help independent bloggers such as myself if you take the view that a rising tide raises all boats. With many of the old bloggers now becoming professional, the status of the entire blogosphere has risen. Independent blogs can be seen as being something of more significance as part of an entire blogosphere which has greater importance. While my readership might be small compared to that of the professional bloggers, I still have near 10,000 readers for many posts when including those reading trough RSS readers, email subscriptions, Kindle, and regular web surfers. Posts which are picked up by Blogburst are seen by far more readers at the web sites of many newspapers and media sites. Distribution through Newstex further increases the influence of the blog (as well as providing a monthly royalty check). Despite all the difficulties in an amature blogger getting noticed among the professionals, this really is not all that bad for a hobby.

Not Only Women Are Subjected To Unfair Attacks

Peter Daou compares Palin-bashing to Hillary-bashing at Huffington Post. His message seems to be that both Palin and Hillary Clinton were treated unfairly as they were women. Both were subjected to some unfair criticism, and some of this was related to their gender, but both were also subjects of attack for reasons independent of this. While it is strange to lump both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton together because their views are so different, both of them have views which I (and many others) find objectionable, both have demonstrated a lack of integrity when pushing their agendas, and both tend to display poor judgment in matters of public policy.

If Peter simply wants to separate such differences of opinion on public policy from personal attacks I totally agree with this. While I would be reluctant to vote for a ticket containing either a Palin or a Clinton, there are many grounds to criticize them without resorting to many of the attacks which they have been subjected to. I not only agree with Peter in criticizing the comments claiming Hillary Clinton was pimping her daughter, I wrote a post defending Clinton on this while opposing her candidacy. When posting about the many lies of Sarah Palin I noted regret that personal issues were mixed in.

What bugs me about the way that Peter lumps together the attacks on both Palin and Clinton in such a manner is that it implies that only female politicians are treated this way. Gender differences do make it inevitable that there will be some differences in the nature of the attacks, but plenty of male politicians have also been treated quite unfairly. One example from each party in a presidential campaign quickly comes to mind–the attacks of the Swift Boat Liars on the honor of a war hero in their false claims about John Kerry in 2004 and the Daisy Ad used by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Unfair treatment is a fact of life in politics. It would be great if it could be eliminated but it cannot. Most politicians take their lumps and continue. They do not run away and hide like Sarah Palin.

Why Is Peter Daou Empowering Rush Limbaugh?

As an aside to my previous post on the leadership role of Rush Limbaugh in the Republican Party, I must also note a dissenting view to the current Democratic strategy from Peter Daou. Many Democratic leaders, including the Obama administration,  have joined  bloggers in making Limbaugh the new face of the Republican Party. Daou asks, Why on Earth Are Democrats Legitimizing and Empowering Rush Limbaugh? I hardly think this is the case, and for reasons I’ll get to later it is really Peter who is empowering Limbaugh.

Peter writes, “Empowering Limbaugh in the hopes of a bank-shot against Republicans will yield the opposite result: Limbaugh will become more powerful, Republicans will relish his increased influence and allow him to do their dirty work.” Sure some Republicans will relish this, but having him do more of their dirty work is exactly what Obama’s people want. There are some more moderate Republicans out there who just might be able to shake free of the GOP’s current reputation and perhaps even challenge Obama in 2012, especially if the economy has not recovered yet. If voters think Republicans are like Rush Limbaugh, Obama has an easy reelection.

It looks like Obama’s political advisers are outsmarting Daou on this, just as they did when he was working for Hillary Clinton in the primary battle. It is no surprise that Peter would fail to understand the potential dynamics of the 2012 race when he shows he still does not get why his candidate lost in 2008. He wrote:

The reality was that the 2008 election was the age-old battle of character-building and character-destruction. Obama’s team won that battle against Hillary Clinton not just because of Obama’s abundant positive traits but because people like Rush Limbaugh gave him a 15-year head start against her.

No, Rush Limbaugh did not beat Hillary Clinton, and there is no reason to empower him in this manner. Sure, Limbaugh was able to get conservative Republicans to hate Hillary Clinton but these people were never going to vote for her anyways. These are certainly not the people who voted in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Hillary Clinton went into the 2008 nomination battle with all the advantages. Rush Limbaugh did not beat Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton beat Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton decided to run a campaign as dirty as that of any Republican. I’ve already went over multiple specifics throughout the primary campaign so rather than rehashing that battle I’ll refer anyone who wants more detail to the blog archives, or check out these arguments from Lawrence Lessig. Peter reveals their fundamental problem here. The campaign was not won based upon character-destruction. Obama won because so many voters were thoroughly disgusted with the politics of character-destruction, along with her many other dishonest tactics. Many voters rejected Clinton when they saw her engage in this.

Early in the campaign, before he realized there was no longer any point in seeking my support, Peter would send me their campaign’s arguments against Obama. More than once I pointed out that they were dishonest attacks and such attacks would undoubtedly backfire. They never figured out how their Limbaugh-style campaign played right into Obama’s hands.

This is a second way in which Peter empowers and even legitimizes the politics of Rush Limbaugh. He empowers Limbaugh when he incorrectly credits Limbaugh for beating Clinton, and he empowers Limbaugh when he supports Limbaugh’s brand of politics of personal destruction, whether practiced by Rush Limbaugh, Republican candidates, or practiced by Hillary Clinton.

Other commentary:

Sean Quinn at FiveThirtyEight.com has a similar take, both with regards to Daou’s assessment of why Clinton lost as well as with regards to Limbaugh:

Today, veteran Democratic messaging strategist Peter Daou panned the Limbaugh strategy, arguing that while it may seem like a good idea today due to irrational Democratic exuberance in the afterglow of the election, in the long term elevating Limbaugh is a mistake because his toxic effect on political debate will ultimately hurt Democrats. Daou, who worked for Hillary Clinton, also mocks the idea of Obama’s powerful campaign as pure myth, instead suggesting that Obama beat Clinton because Limbaugh tore her down for 15 years.

Daou is completely wrong about why Obama won, but that’s incidental. He’s wrong about Limbaugh because Limbaugh is already a tested brand, and the verdict has been rendered. Muhammad Ali, he is not. Independents aren’t going to suddenly start listening to Rush somewhere down the road, just as they aren’t going to suddenly start appreciating Al Sharpton, who also has a brand.

Mike Pence writes:

The point is that Rush is entirely unpopular with the vast majority of the country, who don’t listen to his show. Limbaugh cost the Republicans the US Senate in 2006 when his Michael J. Fox bashing elevated Claire McCaskill. It’s a proven strategy, and Republicans talking about Limbaugh means they’re not talking about anything appealing to the country at large. I fully agree that Obama and the Democrats will be assessed on whether or not they can bring the country out of this economic death spiral; we’re always judged on cleaning up the mess, they’re never judged on making it. But there’s no reason that Republicans shouldn’t have to run in circles and be forced to reconcile the hateful extremism of their de facto leader in the meantime. “I hope he fails” is a great tombstone for these guys.

Matt Browner Hamlin writes:

I look at the Limbaugh question in a similar way to how I think about people like Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal. The Republican Party is hemorraging support now. It lacks ideological direction that appeals to people outside the geographic south, the super rich, or religious conservatives. It is moving quickly towards being a regional political party. They are without a rudder now and that gives Democrats and more specifically liberal bloggers and talking heads the opportunity to define the GOP for the public and for the media. In this case, picking an objectionable character, known for regularly and repeatedly offending vast swaths makes sense. Likewise picking inept liars like Jindal or clueless not ready for primte time players like Palin also makes sense.

Limbaugh is a cipher for how we can define the GOP. Coincidentally he actually is becoming their party’s biggest spokesman. I love a situation where the choice between Democrats and Republicans is between Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh precisely because Limbaugh cannot play at Obama’s level. Does it give him more profile than he deserves? Yes, I would love to see him marginalized entirely, but I think elevating him in the short run may lead to that in the longer run.

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog writes:

It’s simply bizarre that the guy who started Salon’s old Blog Report (which was once called the Daou Report) would say something like this. So much of what we bloggers were doing when Daou was aggregating our posts was to expose the toxic things being said by right-wingers, including Limbaugh and the others he names.

Why was this worth doing? Because, prior to the rise of lefty blogs and Media Matters and Think Progress and, eventually, Stewart and Colbert and then Olbermann and Maddow, hardly anyone was paying attention to the toxic things these people said except people who approved of them. The mainstream press wasn’t paying attention. Most non-right-wingers weren’t paying attention.

These people were saying vile things — but most of the people who would have thought the utterances were vile didn’t know that. Therefore, much of America just had a vague sense that Limbaugh et al. were “irreverent” and “politically correct” — not nasty and poisonous.

These assessments are correct from a strategic partisan Democratic point of view. Personally I would prefer that the Republicans repudiate Rush Limbaugh. This would give them a better shot of challenging the Democrats in future elections, but would also increase the chances of restoring a viable two party system in which both parties have something to offer. This is why my primary interest in Limbaugh controversy has been to encourage the rare conservatives such as  John Derbyshire and Rob Dreher who actually do realize how much damage Limbaugh is doing to the conservative movement. These two goals are actually compatible as exposing Limbaugh’s views does not empower him within the Republican Party. Only the Republicans can empower him in that manner, if they are so foolish.

Clinton Campaign Continues War of Distortion in Blogosphere

Taylor Marsh says “this is a first” but it is not. The email sent to pro-Clinton bloggers by Peter Daou is just one more part of the Clinton campaign’s efforts to distort the record and attempt to distract attention from how dirty and dishonest their campaign has been.

The email makes a bogus argument that it has been the Obama campaign which has been attacking Clinton. As the Clinton campaign has done many times in the past, they make a false equivalence between dirty attacks from their campaign and responses from the Obama campaign. This has gone on for quite a while. Before Clinton’s campaign went way over the line, causing me to use this blog largely to oppose her candidacy, I often received email and invitations to conference calls from Peter. They were often based upon outright lies about Obama. More than once I pointed out to Peter that pursuing such a dirty campaign would only harm Clinton and play to Obama’s strengths. Time has proven me right.

There is a considerable difference between Clinton lying about Obama’s position and Obama criticizing Clinton over a policy disagreement. Peter’s email treats all these the same. To disagree with Clinton over matters of principle is dismissed as “Republican framing,” the implication being that disagreement is not allowed.

I’ve reviewed many of Clinton’s dishonest statements in multiple previous posts. For example, Clinton has sent out mailers which were totally misleading regarding Obama’s positions on issues such as Social Security, abortion rights, Iraq, and health care. Clinton’s distortions on abortion rights led Lorna Brett Howard, the former President of Chicago NOW, to drop her support for Clinton and back Obama. Clinton has also raised bogus charges such on plagiarism, distorted the meaning of voting present in the Illinois legislature, and distorting Obama’s references to Ronald Reagan in an interview. Lawrence Lessig made an excellent video summarizing the reasons to oppose Clinton due to her character. I have previously posted both the video and a transcript here. Bill Bradley has also commented on Clinton’s dishonesty recently as as noted here. A review of any of the sites which concentrate on fact checking the campaign should make it clear which candidate has been concentrating on the use of such distortions in their campaign, and I’ve linked to many such items in previous post.

Among the many bogus attacks has been the claim that Clinton is more prepared than Obama to be Commander-in-Chief. In reality, as I’ve noted many times before such as here, Clinton has no special qualifications on handling a foreign policy crisis. She did not have security clearance when her husband was president, she made no significant decisions, and her accounts of her role in foreign policy have been exposed as being greatly exaggerated. The major difference between the two is that on the most important foreign policy question of recent years, the war in Iraq, Obama got it right and Clinton got it wrong, despite all of the attempts of the Clinton campaign to distort this fact.

Peter even mentions Samantha Power referring to Clinton as a monster. He leaves out the important facts that she immediately attempted to retract the statement, she apologized for the statement, and she quickly left the campaign. The fact of the matter is that Clinton has run a dirty campaign and, while campaign aides should not say so in interviews, she has behaved like a monster.

There is nothing wrong with exposing Clinton’s dishonesty and Rove-style campaign tactics, and it is perfectly legitimate for the Obama campaign to point out these issues. Clinton cannot complain about people saying she will say anything to win when she has repeatedly demonstrated that this is the case. Liberal bloggers have repeatedly complained about such tactics coming from Republicans. Such tactics are no more excusable coming from a Democratic candidate.

Related Post: Hillary Clinton and the Liberal Blogosphere

Hillary Clinton vs. Karl Rove on Electability

With months to go before the first caucus or primary vote is to be cast, political talk, as usual, centers on the horse race as opposed to issues. Karl Rove, who has been proven to be capable of error in 2006, has questioned whether Hillary Clinton is electable:

There is no front-runner who has entered the primary season with negatives as high as she has in the history of modern polling. She’s going into the general election with, depending on what poll you look at, in the high forties on the negative side, and just below that on the positive side, and there’s nobody who has ever won the presidency who started out in that kind of position.

Peter Daou, internet director for the Clinton campaign, has responded to this attack at several blogs today, including at Huffington Post. Peter makes a good point that both Bill Clinton in 1992 and George W. Bush in 2004 actually had similar high unfavorable ratings and went on to win.

Obviously Peter has an interest in this argument so I went on to check the data at Gallup. From the data present it looks like there may actually be an even stronger argument to counter Rove’s argument than Peter made. The data discussed goes back to 1992. In terms of presidential elections this doesn’t include very much data. If Rove was wrong about the elections for which we have this Gallup data, I wonder how many other elections he was wrong about

Richard Nixon was known as Tricky Dick well before he was elected in 1968. I doubt that there wasn’t a point when he had unfavorable ratings as high as Hillary Clinton’s.

The use of George W. Bush in 2004 might be less compelling due to the inherent advantages of an incumbent president, especially during wartime. However, if we do consider Bush in 2004, I sure wonder what Harry Truman’s unfavorable ratings would have been in 1948.

Adding Richard Nixon and Harry Truman only takes us back to 1948. I wonder how many other unpopular candidates might have also won in elections I have less knowledge about.

This is not intended as an endorsement of Hillary Clinton or an argument either way as to whether she is electable. At this point in the race it would be far wiser to look at the candidates in terms of their positions and other qualities which would determine whether they would make a good president. Perhaps when we reach January (or late December) and it is time to vote then perceptions of electability might be included in the final decision with regards to who to vote for. It is way too early for electability to be a factor to decide between the candidates when there is so much more of consequence to learn about them.

Hillary Clinton and the Blogosphere

None of this will be new to those who follow the blogs, but The Politico is running a story on Hillary Clinton’s lack of support in the blogosphere.

Much of the bloggers’ ire is directed at Clinton’s nuanced Iraq policy – from her initial support for the war to her hesitancy in moving away from that position. Even her condemnation of President Bush’s surge proposal, and her calls for troop redeployment, have been derided as “late to the party.”

But such criticism is actually a window into an even broader critique of New York’s junior senator. Many in the blog community view Clinton as overly strategic, and even insincere, in her political maneuvering.
“To most bloggers, authenticity is an important criterion. There is an allergic reaction to hypercautious politicians,” The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington wrote in an e-mail. “Hillary Clinton’s problem with the blogosphere is that she has been so calculating that you can smell it. Every thought has been processed through multiple channels in her and her consultants’ brains. It’s so fabricated.”

Exacerbating this criticism is Clinton’s standing as an inside-the-Beltway politician. Her employment of high-profile consultants such as pollster Mark Penn has drawn the condemnation of the blog community that sees this as the root cause of her cautious politicking. Most bloggers shun the label “anti-establishment.” But many blame the D.C.-insider, consultant-based method of campaigning that Clinton is utilizing for the Democrats’ (recently ended) political dry spell.

What effect opinions like these will have on the primary or general elections is unclear. In an April 2007 Daily Kos poll, Clinton received only 3 percent of the site users’ support. And yet, a Cook/RT Strategies national poll around the same time had her winning 36 percent of the potential Democratic vote.

Even veterans of online politics caution against overvaluing the blogosphere’s significance. “Candidates have been obsessing about bloggers and ignoring their base,” said Zack Exley, director of online organizing and communications for the 2004 John Kerry campaign. “The candidates need to make a direct connection with their base and turn that base on and get the $100 million.”

Clinton has made her share of plays for blogosphere support. She hired as her blog adviser Peter Daou, who in 2004 was the Kerry presidential campaign’s director of online response and blog outreach. She also brought onboard Jesse Berney, a prominent liberal blogger who worked for four years at the Democratic National Committee writing and editing Web and e-mail content.

“I think the blog community is a tremendous addition to American politics and an important part of the political process,” Daou said in an interview, after declining to discuss the campaign’s online strategy. “There is a wide range of opinion in the blog community, and sometimes they will agree on some issues with Sen. Clinton and sometimes they will disagree. The beauty of the medium is that there is a diversity of opinion.”

The Kerry campaign in 2004 showed that polls of bloggers are not representative of pirmary voters, and not predictive of the results. While this article does capture much of the criticism of Clinton among bloggers, the  question of authenticity is not so clear. Many bloggers are willing to overlook similar opportunism from John Edwards as long as he has a big smile and adopts many of the views which are popular in the blogosphere.

The Buying of the Blogosphere 2008?

SolidPolitics.com is questioning whether Hillary Clinton is buying favorable publicity at Daily Kos. During the 2004 campaign Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos came under criticism for taking a “consulting job” with the Dean campaign and reportedly was paid well above the customary amounts for such technical consulting. Subsequently his site became a major factor in promoting Howard Dean in the blogosphere. During the campaign I frequently criticized Kos for misquoting Kerry and for distorting his positions, but it is impossible to know for sure if this was intentional due to financial incentives or simple ignorance. Zephyr Teachout, head of internet outreach for the Dean campaign, later did admit that the Dean campaign’s goal was to obtain Kos’s support in the blogosphere.

SolidPolitics.com repeats the old questions about Kos during the 2004 campaign and also notes that Hillary Clinton is paying $4900 a week for ads at Daily Kos. Checking the rates at the Liberal Blog Network verifies that the second position ads, which Clinton is currently running, cost $4900. The premium position ads, with none currently sold, run $9000 and standard ads cost $2900 per week. The only ads in the Liberal Blog Network which are more expensive are on the premium sidebar at Talking Points Memo, running $10,000 per week.

There is not necessarily anything wrong with the Clinton campaign paying Kos $4900 per week. Unlike the situation where he was paid an inflated amount with the hopes of obtaining his support by the Dean campaign, this is Kos’s usual ad rate. While expensive, it is justified as the site has over 4 million ad impressions per week, by far the highest in the ad network. You certainly cannot blame Kos for taking the ad money. Similarly, it could make sense for Clinton to purchase such ads in the hopes of improving her relatively poor standing among liberal blog readers. For example, her current ad features a call for Gonzales to resign which might improve her reputation among liberal blog readers who click through and come to her site.

The question is whether the ad buy is affecting her coverage. SolidPolitics.com charges that Kos’s attitude towards Clinton has improved since the ads were purchased and compares his posts on her from before and after the announcement. We cannot exclude the possibility that this is affecting his decisions, however it is not the only possible explanation. Peter Daou has been very aggressive in contacting bloggers and trying to improve our impression of Clinton and perhaps either his influence or Clinton’s campaigning have made a favorable impression. It is also possible that seeing the Republican prospects has caused bloggers with close ties to the Democratic Party to take a less critical view of the Democratic front runner, realizing that a year from now they might be backing Clinton regardless of their feelings.

While it might be true that Kos’s posts on Clinton have been kinder than before the ad buys, it should also be noted that Hillary Clinton is hardly the favorite over at Daily Kos. John Edwards has dominated the straw polls and there is also considerable support for Al Gore should he enter the race. There is even a Draft Gore ad up, although at the lower standard ad rate. Still, we must keep in mind the financial motivations at stake when reading the opinions at blogs which command ad prices at this level knowing that the ads might be influencing the coverage of the nomination battle.

Update (September 15, 2007): This post has received several recent links, including a diary at Daily Kos from people who do not believe that Kos has treated their candidate fairly. At present there are no ads from the Clinton campaign, and (while I haven’t been monitoring this) I do not believe Clinton has been a heavy advertiser at Daily Kos for quite a while. While I sympathize with those who have found some of Kos’s posts to be unfair, the argument that it is based upon financial factors is even weaker now than it was when this post was originally written.

Update II: Considering how hot a topic this has become I have added a follow up post on the front page.

Hillary Clinton Opens Blog, Plays it Safe

Hillary Clinton’s blog has opened. Clinton is unlikely to face the controversy faced by John Edwards with the hiring of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. Clinton previously hired Peter Daou for her outreach to the blogosphere, and the blog is being written by Crystal Patterson, who previously ran Ted Kennedy’s blog. Unfortunately being out spoken is expected in the blogosphere, but a different style is needed by those representing public officials.

Besides Patterson, the blog is utilizing guest posts by supporters. Considering that the typical entries on a candidate’s blog are not the most notable products of the blogosphere, increasing interest by allowing supporters to have their posts on the main page is a good idea. The goal, after all, is to keep those interested in the campaign coming back and helping to crate buzz for the candidate (and perhaps donate a few bucks).

Hillary’s blog is most like the candidate blogs we became accustomed to in the 2004 race. In contrast, Obama’s blog combines a traditional blog with a My Space clone and Edwards uses every bell and whistle developed in the last few years. While Obama and Edwards offer more at their blogs, sometimes simpler is better. If the goal is to keep supporters hanging around your site, Edwards has the edge. However if the goal is to keep current supporters interested (but perhaps not so busy with the site that they have no time to campaign in other ways), and to also be user-friendly to voters who are not yet familiar with the blogosphere, Hillary’s blog might be the best from the top tier Democratic candidates.