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Archive for the 'Hillary Clinton' Category

Four Blogs, Two Candidates and One Year Later

Published by William Beutler on May 7, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, Daily Kos, Defections, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Instapundit, John Edwards, John McCain, Netroots, Online Fundraising, Primary fights, White House '08, White House '12 and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Balloon Juice, The Daily Dish, MyDD and Taylor Marsh

Three’s a trend, and this is Blog P.I.’s third post in a row leaning on juxtapositions; this time, the subject of two posts from late 2006 and early 2007 have converged in a way I certainly couldn’t have imagined at the time. Both were about bloggers’ attitudes toward the presidential campaign then still taking shape, and if one can make any definitive predictions in politics, it’s that you can never make definitive predictions about the future. And this is all the more true on the morning after the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana.

  • In October ‘06 it was The Agony and the Apostasy, about the leftward drift of two well-known (onetime) conservative bloggers, Andrew Sullivan and John Cole. Sullivan claims to believe everything today that he believed in the early 2000s, but the day-to-day effect of his blogging is pretty much the opposite. Cole has gone from a Republican supporter of the Iraq war to a sarcastic critic of all things Republican.
  • Then in January 2007, Hillary in Blogistan: On Blogads, the Netroots and Peter Daou, a lengthy reported piece about the Internet advertising campaign directed by Daou, coinciding with the official launch of Clinton’s presidential bid. That post also explored Nevada blogger Taylor Marsh’s incensed reaction to being excluded from the original ad buy. This post also referred to MyDD as “one of the leading anti-Hillary sites on the left.”

So how much does a year change? Quite a bit. The 2006 post wondered about which way the two apostates would break in the 2008 race:

It seems plausible that Sullivan and Cole could support a Republican for president alongside their erstwhile compatriots, but probably not until after the primary is decided.

My answer, hedging as it was, does not seem to have stood the test of time.

  • In the year and a half since, Sullivan has moved his blog from Time to The Atlantic and, in concert with his recent criticism of the Republican Party and conservative movement overall, he has become one of the most prominent supporters of Barack Obama. So much so that The Atlantic published a December cover essay by Sullivan presumptuously titled “Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters.” On the Republican side, Sullivan had preferred McCain over the runners-up, in large part based on McCain’s opposition to the Bush administration’s torture/interrogation policies. Of course, Obama holds the same opinion. Sullivan was no doubt pleased with last night’s results in North Carolina and Indiana, but one cannot escape the sense that he’ll miss the Clintons.
  • Cole, meanwhile, has become an even more constant, if not more ardent, supporter of Obama’s candidacy. Like Sullivan a former 1990s conservative, he acquired no later appreciation for Hillary Clinton. And like Sullivan, he now sees her worse attributes similar to what he doesn’t like about the modern Republican party. He remains a member of the Pajamas Media advertising network which is run and largely populated by right-of-center blogs such as Instapundit and Protein Wisdom. But now he’s also been using the Democrat-oriented ActBlue website to raise money for Obama (and Obama alone) which probably makes him the only blog simultaneously affiliated with both Pajamas Media and ActBlue. As for the primary results, Cole was exultant, apparently staying up most of the night blogging the results.

Clearly, neither are rejoining the Republican camp anytime soon. More interesting, though, is what’s happened with Taylor Marsh and MyDD.

  • At the time, Marsh was leaning strongly toward Edwards and was unimpressed by Clinton. But regardless of her displeasure with the Clinton campaign’s ad buy, barely two months later she had changed her mind and made the case for Clinton. Even before then, her site had started to turn anti-Obama, especially after he dissed her home state by skipping an AFSCME-sponsored presidential forum in Carson City. Since then, she has been one of the most ardent pro-Clinton bloggers and one of the most committed Democratic opponents of Obama. And only just this morning, with the primary results clear, is Marsh shifting again: recognizing that Clinton cannot win, she will oppose John McCain without making the case for Obama.
  • Meantime, MyDD has undergone even bigger changes than the other three. In this case it wasn’t a change of mind, but a change of bloggers: in July of last year, the two principal authors, Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, decamped for an entirely new website: Open Left. Their new blog has now become a new leading anti-Hillary site, as MyDD once was. Meanwhile, MyDD has shifted back to reflecting the opinion of the site’s original founder, Jerome Armstrong. Armstrong stepped up his own blogging and brought in a new contributor, pro-Hillary Todd Beeton. Armstrong had previously been a consultant to Mark Warner, former governor of (and all-but-guaranteed future senator from) Virginia, but since he exited the presidential race more than a year ago, Armstrong has become an unflinching proponent of Hillary Clinton. So much so, in fact, that it has been the source of conflict between Armstrong and his former co-author Markos Moulitsas, to say nothing of the wider leftosphere. Today, Armstrong is sounding a little more apathetic than Marsh, merely affirming that the Clinton campaign has the right to continue on.

Taken as a whole, the four websites defy categorization, dissimilar in cause and effect, except in that their content has changed dramatically over time. And I am sure that whether McCain or Obama takes the oath of office next January, I don’t want to make any predictions about which candidates each site will be supporting in 2012.

The Tale of the E-mail

Published by William Beutler on May 7, 2008 in Barack Obama, Democrats, E-mail, Election Night, Hillary Clinton, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

I’m not sure if interesting juxtapositions will be a trend here at Blog P.I., but here’s another: this time, the tell-tale campaign e-mails from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, sent out in the early morning hours.

From Team HRC, arriving in my inbox at 12:26 a.m.:

Hillary Clinton’s post Indiana and North Carolina campaign e-mail

Tonight’s victory in Indiana was close, and a margin that narrow means just one thing: every single thing you did to help us win in Indiana helped make the difference.

Every call you made, every friend you spoke to about our campaign, every dollar you contributed made tonight’s victory possible. And I couldn’t be more thankful for your hard work.

Every time we’ve celebrated a victory, we’ve celebrated it together. And tonight is no exception. This victory is your victory, this campaign is your campaign, and your support has been the difference between winning and losing.

Thank you so much for making this campaign possible. Let’s keep making history together.

And from Team BHO, arriving at 12:51 a.m.:

Barack Obama’s post Indiana and North Carolina campaign e-mail

We just won a decisive victory in North Carolina thanks to people like you.

Indiana remains too close to call. But what is clear is that we did much better than all the pundits predicted, despite Republicans changing parties to support Senator Clinton, believing she would be easier for Senator McCain to defeat.

Here’s where we stand.

As of Tuesday morning, we needed just 273 delegates to clinch the nomination. When the votes are fully counted Wednesday morning, we will have gained more than a third of them in a single day.

We have a clear path to victory. But now is the time for each one of us to step up and do what we can to close out this primary.

Please make a donation of $25 right now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/results

Thank you for everything you’re doing,

It doesn’t take a sophisticated campaign observer to notice the tonal difference in those letters. Obama scored a big North Carolina victory, and even sort of rescinds his victory speech congratulations to Clinton for taking Indiana. And like her just-barely-a-victory speech last night, Hillary’s e-mail does not declare the Indiana win as signifying anything except her supporters are to be commended. The writing is on the wall; or as the case may be, in her supporters’ e-mail inboxes.

That’s What FriendFeeds Are For

Published by William Beutler on April 22, 2008 in Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Online Campaigns, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Web video, White House '08, William Beutler and YouTube. 2 Comments

As I am frequently given to blogging about the first thing I see in my e-mail box each morning, and commenting on the extremely limited tools on John McCain’s campaign website, here the twain meet. This morning I woke up to find John McCain, or someone using his name, had subscribed to my FriendFeed account:

John McCain joins FriendFeed

FriendFeed is one of the more recent Web 2.0 services on the scene, and some believe it could be the latest next big thing. Considering the McCain campaign’s sometimes uneven online strategy, this is a step in the right direction. It’s better to send your campaign out into the places where people are than to expect them to come to you, anyway. So, I subscribed in return:

Subscribing to John McCain’s FriendFeed

And it’s the campaign, all right — the favorited video indeed shows up on the official McCain YouTube channel as the most recently favorited video.

Better still, the favorited video was uploaded by McCain Girls, the parodic creation of left-leaning humor website 23/6. Sure, the joke may be on McCain, but the McCain campaign is willing to laugh along with the joke. The video favorited is of McCain literally laughing along with it.

Obama, of course, is on FriendFeed as well. He also has more online content piped through it: Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. McCain’s camp only lists the official blog’s RSS feed and YouTube account.

I know that’s not all they’re doing. McCain is on LinkedIn; earlier this month the campaign made clever use of the surprisingly resilient socnet, asking a question of the site’s memebers and receiving more than 3,000 responses.

John McCain on LinkedIn

I’m a bit surprised that McCain’s camp appears not to be using Flickr. Surely someone is taking pictures; during the Fred Thompson campaign we kept the Flickr account updated constantly with photographs taken by Thompson family friend Jim Rydell. (We released all photos under a Creative Commons license, thus providing quality photos of Thompson that supporters could use.)

McCain doesn’t appear to be using Twitter at either likely account (here or here), though supporters are giving the campaign a presence (here and here) on the increasingly zeitgeisty socnet. McCain’s camp did create an account on Digg, but they haven’t used the account since late last year.

Maybe all of this is not crucial, but the more social networks a campaign uses, the likelier it is they will reach people they would not have otherwise. Democrats will do all they can to portray McCain as old and out of touch, so presenting him well him to the young and with-it denizens of these online communities should take on added importance. Meanwhile, fundraising seems to be improving a bit, so maybe Pat Hynes will get a few extra hands to take care of these things.

Twitter Spam Gets Political

Published by William Beutler on April 1, 2008 in Hillary Clinton, Spam, Tech Blogosphere, Twitter, Web 2.0, White House '08 and William Beutler. 6 Comments

Last week, Mashable’s Adam Ostrow asked whether Twitter was facing a spam problem. I said it already does. Ostrow pointed to a Twitter account that seemed to be following far more people than anyone could know, and for purely promotional purposes.

As of today, that account follows (i.e. has friended) 13,000+ Twitterinos, only to tweet links to images of ho-hum abstract artwork. Amazingly, more than 800 people are still following this account. Shortly before reading his post, I found a teenager in Norway who seemed to be doing something similar. While he may in fact be using the service genuinely, he too was following thousands before he’d posted a single tweet. Today he’s following some 3,700+ others, but hasn’t updated for two days, when he was:

watching random crap on youtube :) — Flyaxe on Twitter

Now Twitter spam has taken a turn for the political. On Sunday, CQ’s Eric Pfeiffer told me that his account (which he updates only sporadically) had recently been followed by a horde of obviously fake accounts named for a current or former presidential candidate, plus a number. Most of the notification e-mails he had already deleted, but the others he forwarded to me. They are… interesting. For example, here’s the latest tweet from ChrisDodd53:

Twitter spammer rips off techPresident Daily Digest

I think we can safely assume there are not 52 other Chris Dodds on Twitter. But did you recognize the content of that tweet? I sure did: it was scraped from today’s techPresident Daily Digest. And this pattern is repeated across all the examples of spam accounts he sent my way.

Herewith, a list of these accounts, and a link to the blog whence its latest tweet was scraped:

You know, if these were simply attached to RSS feeds and genuine aggregators of political news, I wouldn’t mind so much. Yes, the aggressive, untargeted following is certainly annoying. But these accounts do not drive traffic to the sites where the words originated. This also makes the creator’s intent all the more inscrutable; they aren’t saying anything, they aren’t promoting anything, and they aren’t updated by hand. The only thing it’s good for, maybe, is souring users on Twitter. But I don’t believe Pownce or Google/Jaiku are really that underhanded. So I remain mystified.

Whatever the cause, this must stop. And it can. Unlike e-mail, which is traded from network to network across yon Internets around the globe, Twitter is administered entirely by Obvious, LLC. They have the same control over the Twitter network as Facebook has over its pages, and it’s within their power to stop it. I’ve previously suggested capping the number of users you can follow, relative to the number of users who are following you. Nothing too restrictive, but something flexible to keep Twitter accounts honest. Jack? Biz? Ev? Little help over here?

In the meantime, there is is already a website carrying the banner against this annoying menace. That’s Stop Twitter Spam, which is currently tracking complaints about spam on Twitter, including my post from last week. The site only barely gets into solutions, and mostly serves to highlight the problem. Most interesting of all is the Twitter Spammer List.

This list includes most of the candidate-based accounts I’ve noted here, and some others I hadn’t. It also mentions the examples from last week, but separates them into two apparent categories of problem Twitter accounts: outright spam and overactive followers. It also notes the number of follows vs. the number of followers and shows the difference as a ratio. The greatest disparity is HillaryClinton5. When the list was last updated, the account followed 2905 others, yet only 25 others followed “her” back. It’s not that HillaryClinton5 has friended the most people — that’s probably the design/art company mentioned above — but that she has the fewest followers. These numbers are a few days out of date, but still give a useful snapshot of the problem.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit nostalgic for the days when Brian Shaler was just following everybody in sight, like it was a game. But then, Shaler is an honest Twitterino. And almost everyone he follows also follows him back.

It’s 3 A.M. Do You Know Where Your Rhetoric Came From?

Published by William Beutler on February 29, 2008 in Advertising, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Rhetoric, Television, The Politico, White House '08 and William Beutler. 4 Comments

This morning First Read covered Hillary Clinton’s last-ditch negative campaign spot, questioning Barack Obama’s readiness for the job of commander-in-chief. Here’s their write-up:

*** Goin’ negative: We were about to write this morning about our surprise that Clinton hasn’t run a negative ad against Obama in either Ohio or Texas. But then we saw the new Clinton ad in Texas that appeared on TODAY. It goes: “It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders…knows the military…someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” Does it remind anyone of that LBJ Daisy ad? Ok, that’s a little extreme… But it sure does raise the specter of fear.

It’s also being compared to the “red phone” ad Mondale put up against the insurgent Gary Hart in 1984.

But it actually reminded me of something else entirely, and much more recent: a campaign mailer put out by AFSCME in support of Clinton in New Hampshire not two months ago. Politico’s Ben Smith was the first to post it; here it is, cropped for clarity/focus:

Hillary Clinton “warhead” mailer by AFSCME

You could say AFSCME tested the message in a small market before the campaign took it wider. Nothing wrong with that unless it was actually an AFSCME-backed 527, which the campaign would be forbidden from coordinating with. Then again, lifting an argument two months later is hardly a smoking gun.

As to its potency, the AFSCME mailer received a bit of negative coverage in the blogsosphere, but not enough to backfire. This time the stakes are even higher, and the campaign itself is making the risky argument.

If it works, it will no doubt join the ranks of those controversial-but-effective spots (add Reagan’s “Bear in the woods” and 43’s “Wolves” ads in there, too). If it doesn’t, as I expect, it will be quickly forgotten and everyone can get on with blaming Mark Penn for everything.

Feud for Thought

Published by William Beutler on February 13, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blog Fights, Hillary Clinton, Internecine Battles, Netroots, New York Times and White House '08. 1 Comment

On Monday evening, Big Head DC pointed to a blog post by ardent Hillary Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh, accusing left-liberal Talking Points Memo of carrying out a

Classic hit job

against the New York Senator. Over the last 24 hours, I’ve seen a few more examples of this Clinton-Obama feud playing out across the leftosphere. For exampe, here’s Big Tent Democrat (aka Armando of Daily Kos) on TalkLeft:

Josh Marshall seems incapable of taking Hillary Clinton’s words at their face value. It seems clear that TPM is intent on ignoring the important part of this story, the pattern of sexism at NBC. This remains a very disappointing episode for TPM, both as a question of journalism and simple decency.

But Marshall isn’t the only progressive blogging entrepreneur taking friendly fire; here’s former Edwards staffer Melissa McEwan at Shakesville:

Dear Arianna, I know you hate Hillary Clinton and everything, but do you—mother to two daughters—really believe that the best way to undermine her candidacy is by giving Stephen “Mickey’s Brother” Kaus space on your pages to unleash a misogynistic tirade against Hillary, that manages to simultaneously dismiss the concerns of women everywhere who have raised red flags over the sexist treatment of Hillary by the media?

And then there is the extreme difference of opinion over Paul Krugman’s latest anti-Obama jeremiad, wherein he accuses the Obama campaign of being like “Nixonland,” after a 1956 Adlai Stevenson quote. Ironic, considering not just the Clinton campaign’s duplicity (say, campaigning in Florida) but also the existence of the term Hillaryland.

From Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Kevin Hayden and Susie Madrak agreeing with Krugman to Hilzoy, State of the Day and Ron Chusid pretty much going WTF, the left is split along Obama-Clinton lines, and they are split almost evenly.

But are they split so badly they cannot put their differences aside once the nomination has been decided? I doubt it. Their ire is not directed at the other candidate as it is directed at the other candidate’s supporters. Rifts may persist among the bloggers themselves, but it’s difficult to see how that translates into weaker support for the eventual Democratic nominee.

527 Reasons John McCain Should Watch Out

Published by William Beutler on February 13, 2008 in 527s, Advertising, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Republicans and Television. 0 Comments

By process, Republicans have eliminated the probability (if not possibility) that anyone but John McCain will be the party’s nominee. Meanwhile, the Democratic contest now appears certain to last several more weeks at least. As little as two months ago, the prognosticators had the Democrats deciding early with the GOP going to a brokered convention, yet the opposite is occurring.

The conventional wisdom right now seems to be that that this is going to hurt Democrats and help Republicans. McCain now has time to win over disaffected conservatives, raise money for the general election and hone his positive message. Meanwhile, the Democrats may not know who their nominee is for sure until a month hence, and whomever emerges victorious will not only have these disadvantages against McCain but may also have to deal with more-serious-than-usual intra-party divisions. That is, a long hard slog between Cinton and Obama could leave the losing faction demoralized and slow to rejoin the fray.

I’m not sure this is correct, at least not overall. Sure, McCain will be better prepared and the Democrat will have to mend fences late. But we’re only talking about the campaigns and party apparatii. This is the age of the 527. And it cannot go without noting that this is true in no small part to McCain’s own campaign finance legislation which, by limiting soft money to the parties, weakened those institutions and, by leaving open a “loophole,” allowed issue-advocacy 527s to replace them.

Certainly, a pro-McCain 527 could launch anytime now, and I assume at least one will. But 527s are less effective at building up than tearing down. Whereas a party must build a governing coalition to succeed, 527s are often driven by a narrow faction or collection of issues. Because coordinating between a campaign and 527 is illegel, they can’t share strategy or resources, and likely won’t know the others’ targets. It’s almost designed to waste resources.

But a negatively-focused 527 doesn’t necessarily need to know whether Obama will be nominated in order to start hitting McCain. So far, we’ve been told that McCain will keep the U.S. in Iraq for 100 years, will start more wars in the meantime, and that he is very old. We will undoubtedly hear more soon. And once the key themes are worked out online, we’ll start seeing them on television.

Meanwhile, Republican 527s can’t be sure that targeting one candidate or the other won’t be money or resources wasted. The RNC just rolled out an Obama Spend-o-Meter, which does in fact play to a McCain strength, especially as the GOP itself has lost credibility on the matter. On the other hand, talking about big-spending Democrats is a pat response. It could just as easily have been the Clinton Spend-o-Meter.

Unfortunatley for McCain and the GOP, a candidate-specific strategy will just have to wait.

There are Two Things Wrong With this Picture

Published by William Beutler on February 11, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Republicans. 0 Comments

F7 with Huckabee and Romney and Obama

If the question doesn’t make sense, then read this:

At Rightroots, we have built a way for Republicans to rally behind their new nominee right out of the gate. We’re asking all Republicans to donate online to the new nominee next Thursday, February 7th. …

On February 7th, we’ll set up a page on Rightroots for you to give to the nominee and show you our community’s results in real time. …

If the nominee is McCain, we still have to do this. His campaign especially is running on fumes financially, but they’ve shown they can be effective with an even a small amount of money.

You can’t read the fine print on the screen shot above (well, you could if you squinted) but here’s what’s relevant:

The Super Tuesday primaries are over and February 7th is here. On Tuesday, Senator John McCain established himself as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, with Governor Mitt Romney and Governor Mike Huckabee winning primaries and caucuses throughout the nation.

Please give generously to the major Republican candidates who remain active contenders for the nomination…

It’s fair to point out that Romney did not officially suspend his campaign until a few hours after the page went live, but it’s also fair to point out that by February 6, McCain was the only realistic nominee. Also fair, Romney was still there as of the last revision of this post. My own initial coverage of the February 7 effort was quite favorable, so I would be derelict if I failed to follow up and say that anyone who bought into the initial pitch — let alone gave money — should feel misled.

The February 7th Sign or: Stop This Train, I Want to Get On

Published by William Beutler on January 31, 2008 in Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Online Fundraising, Republicans, Twitter, White House '08 and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Patrick Ruffini has announced a new Rightroots-branded initiative called February7.org. The premise is simple: Republicans are likely to have a presumptive nominee by the morning after the morning after Super Tuesday (Tsunami Tuesday for you First Read fanboys and girls). This primary has not been as ugly as the Democrats’, but it has been ideologically dispiriting, mostly featuring candidates who fell short of conservative ideals. An early fundraising push could help rally the GOP while the Democrats are still fighting amongst themselves.

That nominee is most likely to be John McCain, while Ruffini has switched his support from “Rudy to Romney,” as he put it Tuesday night. Therefore, the most likely scenario is he will have to grudgingly switch again in about a week. If the move is a painful one for many, better then to get it over with. But there’s more to it, as he explains in the announcement on his own site:

You can probably tell that I have strong views about this nomination contest. Win or lose, I’m equally convinced of the importance of getting behind the eventual winner. A nation at war cannot afford Hillary or Obama in the White House. …

Beyond just showing support for our nominee, we’re doing this to help solve a concrete strategic problem for our Party during the month of February.

The simple fact is that when it comes to contributions from others, our candidates are broke. They’ve spent it all on Florida. No one is up on TV in any February 5th state, while Hillary and Obama have money to burn (I saw Clinton ads in California last weekend). Based on the fact that they have money to play with and have held a fundraising advantage throughout the cycle, there is a chance they could start pummeling our candidate with negative ads right away.

If we fundraise the same old traditional way — with fundraising events and direct mail early and banking on Internet enthusiasm late — we will lose. There is no way we’ll be able to get the money when and where we need it. On the Internet in particular, contributions come in late, often too late for the money to be spent effectively. We’re hoping to help frontload some of this money so that the candidate can use it against Hillary/Obama right away. When it comes to giving, early is the new late.

Well said. But for my money, the best part of the website is that one can toggle between “Stop Hillary” and “Stop Obama,” not unlike a blog that lets you change the background color:

Stop Hillary at February7.org             Stop Obama at February7.org

Please notice that no “Stop Edwards” version was created.

P.S. I first heard about this through a Twitter account Ruffini set up last week: Twitter.com/February7. I followed the account back, but of 111 users Ruffini followed, only 13 followed it back. That 11.7% rate would be terrific if it was direct mail, but it isn’t that. Twitter marketing has been the focus of much discussion over the past year, but here is some evidence that the medium strongly favors established personalities — Ruffini is one, but @February7 is not. And setting up new Twitter accounts is fun, but not all that effective.

Exclusive! Must Credit Radar! Even Though Radar Didn’t Break It!

Published by William Beutler on December 31, 2007 in Asymmetrical Media, Attribution, Hillary Clinton, MSM vs. Blogs and William Beutler. 0 Comments

Big Head DC, the disreputable local gossip rag that routinely outdoes Wonkette in the disreputable gossip department, reports on Radar, Wonkette and the Ragin’ Cajun:

Writing for Wonkette competitor, Radar magazine, yesterday, [Wonkette editor John] Clarke [Jr.] reported that “a source close with” James Carville told him that the Democratic political guru plans to join Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Interestingly, the piece is titled “Radar Exclusive,” yet Big Head DC revealed the same information over sixteen days earlier.

This is not the first time Radar has claimed an “exclusive” when the same information has been previously reported by bloggers.

It’s annoying enough when brick-and-mortar journalistic enterprises won’t give credit to their amateur counterparts, but when a (currently) online-only publication does the same, repeatedly, what can you say?

From now on, I’ll assume that every “Radar Exclusive” is in fact stolen from a blog.

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