Last July, I wrote about Hillary Is 44: Whereas HillaryHub.com is like an official campaign television commercial, Hillary Is 44 is more along the lines of a third-party “issue group” campaign. For the time being, Barack Obama is the target. For example, the notion that Obama is the presidential campaign’s front runner is referred to as “hubris and delusion.”
Now it seems the mystery of who is behind the site has been solved. Apparently it’s “a New York political activist named Alex Rodriguez.”
In any event, The M.O. still seems to be to hate on Barack Obama.
In the race to get out in front of blogospheric attacks and win the politics PR battle on the online front, it’s safe to say that Hillary Clinton is at the very least going in with way more troops than anyone else.
I wrote about HillaryHub.com a few weeks ago, a sort of Drudge Report-rebuttal for pro-Hillaryites. It compiles pro-Clinton news stories and rounds up videos featuring the former first lady and Democratic presidential aspirant.
Now there is the mysterious Hillary Is 44 (implying Hillary will be the 44th president), which is not officially backed by the Clinton campaign and, in fact, is quite coy about who it is backed by at all. (On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd announced that the site is based “inside the Beltway,” but not much more than that is known).
Whereas HillaryHub.com is like an official campaign television commercial, Hillary Is 44 is more along the lines of a third-party “issue group” campaign. For the time being, Barack Obama is the target. For example, the notion that Obama is the presidential campaign’s front runner is referred to as “hubris and delusion.”
The Internet is playing a larger role in campaign politics each election cycle. Hillary may or may not be 44, but the Hillary Is 44s are here to stay.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign broke news of an online sort this week in announcing the endorsement of Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg. The online part comes in where the announcement was made: HillaryHub.com.
Billed as something of an anti-Drudge Report, HillaryHub.com is a really tidy and clean one page source for all things going on in Hillary world… of an upbeat and positive and PR-approved note, of course.
From a design standpoint, I love this site. A left column displays stories “in the news,” the center column features “on the blogs,” while the right column has two “latest videos.” This is a pretty great and straight-forward model that personalities and politicians should take note of when trying to insert their own position and agenda into the overall conversation.
I love Howard Fineman. He’s one of the best political writers in the business. He’s great on Hardball, and his coverage and analysis of elections and the pure sport of politics is second-to-none.
But still, it’s hilarious when non-tech savvy journalists wade into those electronic weeds.
The Internet is now a part of politics as it never has before. As Fineman rightly notes, it was Howard Dean’s (and Joe Trippi’s) success in raising money and building grassroots community online in 2003 that ushered political campaigns into a new era. Politics and politicians have always followed the money, and therefore 2008 presidential hopefuls are online and actively seeking advantage, dollars, and voters. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama broke away from the long tradition of officially announcing a presidential campaign in a hometown dripping from its very pores in Americana, for example, and instead announced via online video.
Politicians are now seeking ways to integrate technology into their relationship with constituents as well. Obama has made at least one appearance on popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos during the run-up to the pivotal 2006 midterm elections, and ‘08 presidential aspirant John Edwards delivers regular posts on Twitter, the newest rage of the tech-bloggy set. (Edwards staff has thanked his “followers” on Twitter for all of their words of support over the recent announcement that Elizabeth Edward’s breast cancer has returned.)
Journalists are trying to keep up. It’s chuckle-worthy every time that Hardball’s Chris Matthews (another favorite of mine) announces that features and video clips can be found online. He has a look of smirking wonder that seems to say, “There’s this thing called the Internet and people actually do stuff there, can you believe it?”
This week, in the midst of an interesting-as-usual piece called “Out of Control,” which looks at how technology and the media now leave political candidates with less control over the message of campaigns than ever before, Fineman let this beauty slip: “Last time I checked, MySpace, by far the leading social networking blogosphere, had more than 60 million registered members.”
The leading social networking blogosphere. If only he had just scaled it back half a notch and left it at “leading social networking website.” Or platform, tool, place, locale, or e-shack of misbegotten ill designed schlock. But blogosphere has a pretty clear if broad connotation, representing that vast array of millions of blogs, most of which are separate online entities from one another.
MySpace certainly has millions of profiles, all of which have a blog feature. So I suppose it would be okay to call MySpace a blogosphere unto itself, though I would wager that’s going a bit too far. And it would be definitely be inaccurate to compare that “blogosphere” with the blogosphere.
So MySpace is not a social networking blogosphere. It’s a huge and monstrous social networking site. The blogosphere is its own universe (thus the ’sphere!) and many who occupy it are more than happy to not be associated with MySpace.
Howard, we love you, but you gaffed a little on this one!
