Chalk this one up in the category of the left eating its own.
Rolling Stone Executive Editor Eric Bates appeared on the March 7 “News Live” on MSNBC to talk about his magazine’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. He had several reasons why he favored Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), but pulled no punches when it came to his critique of Clinton.
“Hillary Clinton has really exhibited some of the things that most disgust us about politics,” Bates said.
Bates was highly disapproving of the tone Clinton exhibited on the campaign trail.
“The way she’s gone after Obama – dismissed his stance as nothing more than rhetoric, the veiled kind of racism that’s been displayed, the ‘be afraid; be very afraid’ sort of advertising that she’s running is really disappointing,” Bates told anchor Amy Robach.
Bates said the endorsement also came on the heels of Obama’s “remarkable” use of the Internet in his campaign.
“He’s managed in a way that no candidate ever has to unite online in social networking tools with a really old fashioned neighbor-to-neighbor kind of get out the vote, door-knocking, field operation,” Bates said. “And that’s why he’s winning, particularly why he’s winning caucuses.”
Obama appeared on the cover of the March 2008 issue of Rolling Stone. The story focused on the senator’s use of online networking, or “machinery of hope” as the magazine put it.
According to Tim Dickinson’s article, the campaign posts events on my.barackobama.com, a specialized social networking site, and requires email addresses as a price for admission to rallies.
“In the process, the Obama campaign has shattered the top-down, command-and-control, broadcast-TV model that has dominated American politics since the early 1960s,” Dickinson wrote.
The endorsement of Obama is the first time the magazine has endorsed a candidate during the primaries. It has previously endorsed former President Bill Clinton, Sen. John Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore in their campaigns for the presidency.
