The Drudge Report And Clinton

International Harold Tribune

WASHINGTON: As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing-red siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge," and, "$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report."

Within minutes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's fund-raising success was injected via Drudge into the day's political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Obama's speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign - the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side - it was a telling assault.

Clinton's aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

That man, Matt Drudge, came to national prominence a decade ago as a nemesis of the Clintons who used the Web to peddle, gleefully, the latest news and rumor generated by the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

That people in Clinton's campaign orbit would tip off the Drudge Report to its fund-raising numbers is in part a reflection of her pragmatic approach to dealing with potential enemies like Newt Gingrich or Rupert Murdoch.

Sorry, Hillary. Sleeping with the enemy just lost you my support. The Mighty Wurlitzer has been the major cause of our political woes in this country. Willing to supplant true democracy with corporate fascism, it has manage to destroy in a few short years what Russia failed to due in over a half a century.

You have done nothing this election but desperately sink lower and lower into the very pond scum you had so successfully stayed above during the eight years of your husband's presidency. Indeed, your desperation set in shortly after your early losses to Obama. Maybe, just maybe, in the end it is Obama's willingness to stay out of the once wholly owned Republican Right Wing Noise Machine that has won over the electorate of this country.

People are tired of the same old partisan politics that have been a standard since your husband's presidency. They are looking for a change. And Obama appears to be embracing that change. It is not so much he will coddle up to the remnants of the Republican party and it's wheezing, aged Wurlitzer, as it is he will avoid the political gamesmanship so long a staple of Washington partisanship, something this article suggests you fail to grasp.

That being said, should a small miracle happen, and you still come out the Democratic nominee, you will have my support. I still see you qualified for the presidency above any Republican or Independent currently in the running. Unless, of course, Gore decides to run as an Independent. Then it is "See Ya!"