Politics

She’s been called “power-hungry” and “humorless.” Her stance on Iraq has been derided as “incoherent dribble”; her presidential campaign, “heading blindly into a buzz saw that is going to chew her.” Even in satire, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has been brutally battered, compared to the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters. “Puffed up on hot air,” went the description.

 

And this comes from her base.

 

As she campaigns to be the nation’s first female president, Clinton may find that her biggest opposition comes not from primary rivals or Republican challengers, but rather from the blog community that often views her as a political punching bag.

 

The acrimonious relationship between Clinton and the blogs is extensive and problematic. No Democratic politician over the last four years, save for Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), has inspired more online criticism.

 

As seen during Howard Dean’s run for president in 2004 and several Senate races in 2006, the netroots (which often takes its lead from the blogs) is playing an increasingly influential role in fundraising – already a Clinton strong suit – and drawing out the vote – where Clinton could be tripped up. Indeed, the primary elections may boil down to a simple question: Who can excite the base more, Clinton, who remains popular among most registered Democrats, or the blogosphere, which is the active segment of the party?

 

“The blogs are clearly not as swayed by the Clinton aura and magic as much of the rest of the progressive world is,” Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, an organization that bridges traditional politics and the Internet, said in an interview. “And the netroots now have a seat at the table. They are part of the progressive family and an important part. Like any constituency or group you have to earn their support.”

 

Any explanation for the frosty relationship between Clinton and the blog community begins with her stance on Iraq. Clinton’s initial support for the war and her hesitancy in moving away from that position has drawn the ire of some of the blogosphere’s key players. Even her condemnation of President Bush’s surge proposal, and her calls for troop redeployment, have been derided as “late-to-the-party.”

 

But this criticism is actually a window into an even broader critique of New York’s junior senator. Much of the blog community views Clinton as overly-strategic, even insincere, in her political maneuvering, including her Iraq policy.

 

“To most bloggers, authenticity is an important criterion. There is an allergic reaction to hyper-cautious politicians,” Arianna Huffington of the progressive website, The Huffington Post, said in an email. “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.”

 

Instead of being embraced by the blogs as the first serious female presidential contender, Clinton has, to a certain extent, been labeled an “opportunist,” the candidate more interested in getting elected than in standing on principles. When asked for his assessment of the Clinton candidacy, Matt Stoller, the pugnacious blogger at MyDD, bristled, “Her model of doing politics is based on pandering to individual groups.” He than cited Clinton’s stance on Iran – “she’s giving cover to Bush’s strategy” – and her fundraiser with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, as evidence that she’d rather triangulate than play the role of progressive.

 

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the prominent political blog, Daily Kos, had even stronger words. “Bottom line,” he said in an email, “we don't like bullshit. And on Iraq -- the key issue heading into 2008 – she's feeding us bullshit.”

 

Exacerbating this criticism is Clinton’s standing as an inside-the-beltway politician. Her dependence on such high-profile consultants as Mark Penn, James Carville and others, has drawn the ire of the blog community which sees this as the root cause of her cautious politicking. Most bloggers shun the label of “anti-establishment.”

 

What effect opinions like these will have on the primary or general elections remains undetermined. Studies show that a vast majority of voters don’t pay attention to political blogs. According to a March 2005 CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey, only 7 percent of adults said they read blogs at least a few times per week. Forty-eight percent said they had never read one at all. Moreover, there is scant indication, at this juncture in the campaign, that the blog community’s take on Clinton has rubbed off on the greater populace.  In a January 2007 poll on the Daily Kos website, Clinton received only 4 percent of support among the site’s users. In a Time magazine poll that same month, however, 40 percent of potential Democratic voters said they supported her candidacy.

 

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

 

And yet, early indications suggest White House aspirants are pining hard for the blogosphere’s support. Former Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards made a strategic overture to the blog community when he retained two liberal feminist bloggers on his campaign staff even after it was revealed they had made inflammatory postings on religion and politics. Both women ultimately quit, but the move won Edwards online credibility. It also, ironically, provided another forum for the blogs to criticize Clinton. Writing on MyDD, blogger Scott Shields made note that a key Democratic critic of Edward’s blog staff, Brian O’Dwyer, had given $12,100 to Clinton since 2000. “It's simply impossible to believe that it was anything but his loyalty to Clinton that led O'Dwyer to join in the right-wing pile-on,” wrote Shields.

 

Sen. Barrack Obama, like other candidates, has podcasted and blogged. But his greatest inroads into the netroots have been made by supporters on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.com. On Feb. 10, the online group “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack),” started by a George Washington University student, reached 250,000 members. By comparison, Clinton’s group, “Hillary Clinton for President — One Million Strong,” had less than 3,500 members by the same date.  

 

Clinton has made her share of plays for blogosphere support. She hired Peter Daou, the director of the online response and blog outreach for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, to be her blog advisor. She also brought on board Jesse Berney, a prominent liberal blogger who worked for four years at the Democratic National Committee writing and editing web and email 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 some times they will disagree. The beauty of the medium is that there is a diversity of opinion.”

 

The measures taken by all of the presidential candidates underscore a growing recognition that the netroots – and the bloggers who inspire it – will play a crucial role in the upcoming primary. For starters, there is money to be made. In 2004, John Kerry raised roughly $80 million in Internet donations.

 

In addition, readership at the major political blogs are growing steadily.  Whereas in 2003 the top number of daily page views at Daily Kos was slightly under six million, the high in 2006 was nearly 49 million, according to the website tracker Technorati. The increases, to be sure, fluctuated based on political cycles, but they were generally shared (although not as drastically) by sites such as talkingpointsmemo and MyDD.

 

Finally, there is a strong belief that the blogs – as seen during former Sen. George Allen’s (R-V.A.) “Maccaca” misstep – have the ability to drive media coverage.

 

“Campaigning online got a huge boost in 2006 as it did in 2004, and blog sites are a big part of that,” Mark Blumenthal, a former Democratic pollster who is now the editor and publisher of pollster.com, said in a phone interview. “It is clearly a source of money as well as a place for activism. It is clearly a place where ideas and messages for candidates get shaped.”

 

As Clinton and the blogs compete for the heart of Democratic voters, a potential impasse looms on the horizon: A Clinton primary victory could create a dilemma for those in the blog community – and there are many – who value electoral victory above all else. “The netroots is more partisan than ideological, more democratic than liberal,” said New Democrat Network’s Rosenberg. “Winning elections is often more important than some of the debates going on.”

 

After spending four years attacking Clinton on everything from her stance on video games to her position on Iraq, the question remains, how strongly would the blog community back her candidacy should she prevail in the Democratic primary?

 

“I can’t imagine that if Hillary won the nomination that the democratically leaning blogs wouldn’t support her,” Josh Marshall, founder and editor of the Talking Points Memo, said in an interview. “Given that she is basically saying we should get out of Iraq by the time a next president is in office, I have a hard time seeing her going up against a pro-war Republican and not having the backing of the Democratic Party.”

 

Clinton does have nearly a year to patch up her frosty relationship with the blogs and avoid this potential, strange-bedfellows marriage. She’s already taken steps. When Clinton announced her presidential bid, her campaign put ads on a variety of political blogs. She also has launched a series of video Webcasts. And yet, the challenge remains steep.

 

Some political observers see very little room for Clinton to endear herself with the blog community. Indeed, nothing short of a full repudiation of her stance on Iraq is likely to help Clinton win the blogosphere over, according to Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report. And even that might not be enough. 

 

“Someone put it to me this way,” said Duffy. “She’s the wrong woman at the right time. If they could find a female version of Obama they would be excited.”