Daou to work for Clinton campaign

NY Times:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has hired Peter Daou, one of the most prominent political bloggers in the nation, to help disseminate her message in a forum that has not always been that hospitable to her.

The move underscores the degree to which bloggers — the authors of Web logs, or blogs — have begun to transform American politics. In many cases, candidates have even set up their own blogs, with staffers answering questions, presenting policy proposals and posting campaign literature and videos.

Mrs. Clinton, who is up for re-election this year and is a possible presidential candidate for 2008, has been a frequent target of bloggers, particularly liberals who are angry over her refusal to disavow her vote in 2002 to authorize President Bush to use force in Iraq.

The Clinton camp is clearly counting on Mr. Daou, who directed blog outreach and online rapid response for Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, to help improve Mrs. Clinton's image among liberal bloggers, who are fast becoming a constituency in their own right and may thus play a significant role in selecting the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

...

Daou has a popular site on Salon where he presents excerpts from blogs on both the right and left. On a couple of occassions he has linked post from PrairiePundit that have generated significant traffic spikes including several liberal readers who ventured out of their cocoon. I have found him to be fair in his handling of my posts.

This is probably a good move for Senator Clinton. Many of the bloggers from the leftist persuasion have embraced Mark Warner as a vessel for their hopes, because he does not have the baggage of a record to embarrass their posturing unlike those who have been in the arena for years. One of Clinton's challenges will be to push candidates like Warner into taking a stand that will inevitably alienate some on the left. That probably will not be all that hard, since he appears to be much more moderate than the Kos kids who have embraced him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains