Hillary Strikers Should Boycott the Entire Blogosphere

It's amusing. A relative handful of Hillary supporters have launched a "strike" on Daily Kos and now such luminaries as Matt Drudge have picked up the story and others are citing it as representative as a great divide among the blogosphere between the two camps.

There is no great divide. Hillary supporters constitute somewhere around a whopping 10% at Daily Kos. Is that division? No. That means that Daily Kos users are 90% united in their support of Barack Obama.

But it's not just Daily Kos. I read many progressive blogs. And while the numbers don't appear to be quite as severe as Daily Kos, they do trend similarly in their support of Obama and, most importantly, their opposition to the negative campaign tactics of the Clinton camp.

It is impossible to precisely gauge where the blogosphere lies along the support spectrum. Democratic Underground, probably the next biggest Democratic community site, has done a few polls that have Hillary's support at between 10-20%. MoveOn took a poll among their email list (not the same as the blogosphere) and Hillary got 29% to Obama's 70%. They polled their members to decide if they should endorse a candidate. The rule was someone had to exceed 60% for them to endorse. They endorsed Obama.

MoveOn's numbers aren't necessarily a good indicator of the netroots however. Many of their members are not active participants in the so-called netroots, blogging every day. Therefore, they are not inundated with campaign news and information that bloggers are. So their numbers reflect somewhat the general electorate. Somewhat.

However you cut it up though, the fact is Clinton doesn't enjoy the support of the netroots base to any extent at all. Her war vote, her ties to corporate interests, and more recently, her seeming endorsement of John McCain over Barack Obama have severely damaged her support among the netroots base.

In this context, the so-called writers strike seems a lot less a story of a great divide then just a disgruntled and small minority trying to make some noise.

Part of their gripe has been the tone of Obama supporters. There's some credibility to this. But only if one concedes that it goes both ways. As one who's not invested in either campaign (I supported Edwards), I think I'm in a pretty good position to judge objectively. And I can say that I've seen the tone get nasty on both sides.

But what I haven't seen in any degree to suggest a trend is what Alegre has accused the broader Daily Kos community, nor the site administrators, of. And that is lying about Hillary Clinton. With 100,000 plus members, there are always going to be a few. But that does not make a trend and the trend as I see it is the vast majority of Daily Kos members have been angry, sometimes furious, but overall pretty fair in their criticism.

There are objective facts here. And the fact is, after Obama swept nine straight primaries, culminating in Wisconsin, the Hillary campaign decided their only chance was to go negative. So they did.

Obama's campaign used a regrettable mailer reminiscent of Harry and Louise, and attacked hard on Hillary's flip flopping on Nafta. But no one with any seriousness has accused Obama of going negative. In fact, the big story when the campaign turned nasty was whether Obama could go negative without betraying his themes of hope and unity.

The negativity of the Clinton campaign has been palpable though. Bullshit charges of plagiarisms, sending out a picture of Obama in "Muslim" garb as though that should matter, Hillary failing to just say outright that Obama is a Christian, as though that should matter, putting out an ad that makes Obama look darker, as though that should matter, comparing him unfavorably to the Republican opponent - a cardinal sin of Democratic politics.

These are objective cases of the Clinton campaign taking the low road. It is not debatable. You don't have to be an Obama supporter to know it.

Even Keith Olbermann, an obvious friend of the Clintons, was outraged over the tack that this campaign has taken. And he was right. By every objective standard, the Clinton campaign has adopted a strategy that has both harmed Obama and the Democratic party. Everyone knows it except a very small band of loyalists (denialists) who have decided they prefer the warm glow of the choir over at MyDD then having to defend their candidates actions here and elsewhere.

The amusing part is that they chose Daily Kos, as though Daily Kos was somehow an exception. It's not just Daily Kos. If Hillary supporters want to boycott sites that have turned hostile to the Clinton campaign's destructive tactics, they have a lot of boycotting to do.

No, all this is is a cheap publicity stunt by the disgruntled few (what 100, 200 of them?) who are frustrated that the vast majority of the netroots aren't letting CNN or SNL do their thinking for them. This is not Bush World. There are objective facts. And the fact is that among the most well informed people in the country, the regulars of the blogosphere, Clinton is incredibly unpopular.