The Hillary netroots spin

Ahh, Yesterday I wondered where the WSJ got the notion that Hillary had scored significant victories in the "netroots primary", since all objective evidence suggests that Hillary, in fact, has little online support.

Turns out the reporter just rewrote these two Clinton campaign press releases: Clinton candidacy garners huge online response and 24 hours later, the reviews are in.

Say what you will about the Clinton campaign, they are good, spinning what was in fact an underwhelming response into some sort of huge outpouring of support. One could call it "dishonest", but well, that's just politics, right? And is it the Clinton campaign's fault that neither of the declared candidates with genuine online support -- Obama and Edwards -- trumpeted their real support? If no one wants to claim netroots gains, why shouldn't Clinton muscle in?

As WSJ reporter Amy Schatz proved, it's not like traditional media reporters know a lick about the netroots. So they'll be more than happy to reprint Clinton press releases.

And it's a bizarre world, one in which fierce Clinton critics like MyDD's Matt Stoller are suddenly supporters. One of the press releases quotes Stoller as saying:

"Here's my sense of where the campaigns are. I'm no fan, but Hillary Clinton's announcement has been handled perfectly. The blog outreach was well-done, and it seems that calls went out to the right people at the right time.... Clinton is a very strong candidate and no one has the chops to take her down right now."

Fair enough. He wrote that. But they don't include links where Stoller trashes Hillary, like here, here, here, and here. And that's just in the last two days. Funny that her campaign didn't quote this passage, which is more representative of his and the netroots take on Hillary:

Ironically, though she is popular among some base voters and most progressive elites, few activists, bloggers, or local politicians actually want Hillary as the nominee. Local politicians are desperately afraid she will hurt downticket candidates all over the country. Progressives know she hasn't dealt with Iraq, and will cripple the Democratic Party badly as Iraq gets worse in 2007 and 2008. And political junkies know that she has done very little that is substantive in the Senate except grant Bush the power to go to war and pander on flag-burning and video games. Politically, Hillary has passed out enough favors and kept every group atomized and fearful enough to make her seem both unpalatable and inevitable. That is why her camp is claiming that they are in the netroots primary, when they are simply not.

I believe her tending to an elite audience and ignoring the concerns of various activists explains the loathing of Hillary Clinton within a certain piece of the progressive base.  I've noted before how one slice of primary voters is pretty similar to the netroots.  This loathing isn't based on the right-wing slime machine, though often progressives unwittingly slip into discussions about things like 'electability'.  It's a loathing that is more 'gut', more about conflicting identities.  Chris has noted this with his excellent series of about a year ago on class stratification between the activist class and the elites.  Hillary Clinton is an establishment elitist, and we are opposed to this institutional baggage.

The campaign also cherry picks diaries on Daily Kos to pull ones that are supportive while ignoring the many, many more that are critical, attempting to give the impression that there is massive support for her effort on the nation's largest progressive blog.

But this is instructive. Clinton's campaign has it "together" online more than all the others. It has hired seasoned netroots hands Peter Daou, Jesse Berney (formerly of the DNC), and Judd Legum (formerly of CAP). The Edwards and Obama campaigns don't even have a single netroots coordinator.

So the Clinton campaign can make up an alternate reality where she is the prohibitive netroots favorite while her opponents -- the ones with actual widespread netroots support -- are left unable or unwilling to take advantage of that support.

Let's remember the results of the last dKos straw poll, with over 22,000 responses, taken after Hillary's announcement:

Edwards 35
Obama 28
Clark 17
Richardson 5
Clinton 4

Here's what I think -- Hillary has no interest in truly making up ground in the netroots. Rather, she sees it as a place to make a good show, and then sell that to the traditional media. It's her campaign's version of "Shock and Awe". Lots of noise. Lots of flashing lights. Lots of smoke. But it's all for show.

If she was serious about earning netroots support, the campaign would've looked at that four percent and created a strategy to pump it up in the following months. But out of the gate, her campaign has taken to misrepresenting online sentiment for the benefit of traditional media reporters who don't know any better.