A lot of people have been making the case here that Hillary Clinton supporters will need to be wooed back into the Democratic fold if they are to vote in November, and that we Kossacks can play a part by being honest and respectful of them.
However, the candidate's campaign might want to do a little bit of that itself when it comes to their home website.
Briefly: HillaryClinton.com is in the business of fooling its visitors and leading them to anti-Obama smear websites.
Barack Obama's website is well-designed. It has a limited palette, making it easy on the eyes. It's uncluttered. It has links to the personalized part of the site, which feels similar to FaceBook's clean and efficient design (not surprisingly, as FaceBook's creator was hired to design Obama's site). Most importantly, it has the current delegate count displayed prominently on the front page.
But of course, you all know that.
Hillary Clinton's site, however, uses more colors, which is distracting (oh, that canary yellow!) and makes everything look rather busy.
More importantly, there is no delegate count on the front page. Hmm, it's almost as if the campaign doesn't want its supporters knowing how dire the situation is. Now, why would that be....
In fact, after half an hour of rifling around the site -- neither candidate's website has a search function, which is very disappointing -- I still can't find a page on the Clinton website indicating the delegate count. Not only does Obama have his on the front page, his Results Center (off the "Learn" tab on the front page) has a great little animation.
If anyone can point me to the page on HillaryClinton.com showing the delegate count, I'd be grateful to see it.
However, what I find to be much more ominous is the way that Hillary Hub is engaged in directing visitors to the prime anti-Obama sites, such as No Quarter, MyDD (alegre), Tennessee Guerilla Women, TalkLeft (Jeralyn), and Democratic Daily.
Now, the actual posts that were linked to on the current front page weren't out of bounds -- they mostly talked up the candidate, which I think is great, and I don't really have a beef with individual posts that are strong for Clinton without being radically unfair on Obama. Also, TGW does a good job most of the time pointing out instances of misogyny against Clinton, although I disagree that calls for her to drop out are per se sexist; they're stupid but not automatically sexist unless sexist language is used. (We here at dKos also need to remember to reign in sexism whenever we see it. Just sayin.)
But linking to No Quarter? That'd be like McCain linking to Free Republic.
I need to point out also that Hillary Hub has a disclaimer at the bottom of the page stating that the views of external websites are not the views of Hillary for President. Fair enough. But it doesn't excuse the campaign's role in selecting these posts to display on the Hub front page. Putting those bloggers on the front page is a tacit approval of their content. At the very least, it's revealing that Clinton's web team is regularly reading the misinformation and smears that are posted by SusanHu and the like.
So, my questions: Is it unfair of me then, to have a problem with Hillary Hub linking to the execrable No Quarter? Has BarackObama done anything similar? Remember, this isn't some random supporter's page, off the beaten path. This is the front page of Hillary Hub.
And: How many of the Clinton supporters who say they won't vote for Obama have any idea how unlikely it is for their candidate to win the nomination?