A presidential candidate has once again found a way to use the internet to benefit her campaign, and this time it's pretty simple. Hillary Clinton has launched the Web site delegatehub.comin hopes of convincing people that the race for the Democratic nomination for president is not over, and she in fact has a good chance of getting the nomination. Of course Hillary already has a main site for her campaign, hillaryclinton.com. Delegate Hub, however, takes on a very different feel from what you would find on a candidate's official site. The site begins with a statement on the current delegates and essentially reads as a pro-Hillary blog, both in the way the delegate situation currently stands and in the front page of linked articles that paint Hillary positively.
The thinking behind this site seems fairly simple: politically inclined Americans are already reading slanted blogs like this written by outsiders, so why not have a candidate create one themselves, giving them complete control over its content.
While I have no problem with a political candidate creating a blog that is slanted toward them, there's one thing about Delegate Hub that really bothers me. It's the list of "Facts" on the right hand bar. One in particular:
FACT: Florida and Michigan should count, both in the interest of fundamental fairness and honoring the spirit of the Democrats' 50-state strategy.
I really don't mind a site being slanted to one side, but this really crosses the line. Florida and Michigan should count? This is a fact? It sounds an awful lot like an opinion to me. Not only is it an opinion, but it pays no attention to why Florida and Michigan don't count, and also says nothing of the fact that Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan since he knew it wasn't supposed to count, so therefore all of the delegates would go to Hillary. The idea of a slated blog run by a campaign certainly isn't a bad one, but I think it's very important for candidates to uphold what really is fact and what is opinion, which is what this is.
And if you want a good chuckle, take a look at this eerily similar site some Obama supporters have put together in response to Hillary's Delegate Hub.