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A Hillary Fan Hiding Behind A Blog

A few months back, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the target of a negative video attack by an anonymous YouTube user who favored Sen. Barack Obama, one of Clinton's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. The producer of that video, Phil de Vellis, eventually was outed as the employee of a firm consulting for the Obama campaign and lost his job as a result.

Now the tables have been turned, with an anonymous supporter of Clinton getting some attention for a blog that is unfriendly toward Obama. The site, dubbed Hillary Is 44 because of its goal of seeing her elected as the 44th president, has been online since mid-April but is getting noticed now because it merited a critical mention in an OpinionJournal column about Clinton by Peggy Noonan.

It is rather mysterious. It does not divulge who is running the site, or who staffs it. It is not interactive; it has one informative voice, and its target audience seems to be journalists and free-lance oppo artists. ...

Encouraging readers to send in "confidential tips," its primary target and obvious obsession is Barack Obama: "Senator Barack Obama (D-Rezko) is busy lately lying about President Bill Clinton" and "attacking entire communities." "We have written extensively on Obama, and his indicted slumlord friend Antoin 'Tony' Rezko. We have repeatedly warned David Axelrod, Michelle Obama and Barack Obama that this story is not going away." The Obama campaign is "still posing as innocents incapable of doing anything unsavory even as evidence mounts that unsavory is their favorite dish." "Dirty Obama Smear" and "Obama's Dirty Mud Politics" are two recent headlines.

This appears to be the subterranean part of Hillary's campaign, the part that quietly coexists with the warm, chuckling lady playing the jukebox with her husband.

Noonan provided no evidence to support her suggestion that Hillary Is 44 is somehow part of the Clinton campaign, and the site includes a statement that it is not affiliated with Clinton's presidential team. But the Obama incident earlier this year shows that some connection, however remote and perhaps unknown to the campaign, is plausible.

It also wouldn't be the first time that purportedly independent blogs have caused problems for their preferred candidates. Such blog scandals surfaced last year in Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia.

Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, noted of Hillary Is 44, "The anonymity of the site raises a legitimate inference that there is some connection to the campaign."

That anyone would suspect, without strong evidence, a link between a campaign and a random, anonymous blogger is unfair. But politics in the information age has become so ugly that suspicion is the norm. Forget "trust but verify;" these days, people would much rather assume and villify, and then wait for somebody to prove them right -- or wrong if they can.

Posted by Danny | 02:18 PM

Comments

Sounds a lot like the phony "Stop Sex Predators Now" site the Dems set up to destroy Mark Foley.

Richard R | 06.24.07 09:02 PM

Great reporting Danny. Had not yet heard about this one.

It's worth following.

David

David All | 06.24.07 09:35 PM

The tone's wrong, the writing style is wrong - it's not nearly professional enough to be part of the Clinton campaign. It's just a wannabe - notice how many pages are under construction. Peggy, as always, is relying on the usual Republican technique of setting the Democratic candidates against each other. Can you quote me yawning?

http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=hillaryis44&tld=org

the corrector | 06.24.07 11:49 PM

Probably Dan Rather. He's got a lot of time on his hands nowadays.

Diggs | 06.25.07 08:38 AM

"Corrector," all a Republican needs to do to set Democrats against each other is to agree with one of the Democrats out of the hearing of the other, but make sure the other hears the response.

For Lefties, the issue is not the goal. The goal is power. Too bad some of your supporters regard issues as important.

Phillep | 06.25.07 10:55 AM

Forget "trust but verify;" these days, people would much rather assume and villify (sic)...

That's a great line, to which one might add "It takes a villagifier."

Tom Maguire | 06.25.07 02:27 PM

The REAL story: Peggy Noonan has gone down-market in an attempt to catch the approving eye of Rupert Murdoch, the putative buyer of the WSJ. Think about it. That column, full of innuendo and attempts to stir the pot, is exactly the sort of thing he encourages in his other papers. Shades of things to come, perhaps?

Tom J | 06.26.07 09:34 AM

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