Brendan Nyhan

Noonan: Hillary is behind hillaryis44.com

In an op-ed about Hillary Clinton, Peggy Noonan asserts without evidence that the Clinton campaign is behind a pro-Hillary site called hillaryis44.com:

But there is another side of the Clinton campaign, and I found some of it this week. It is a new Web site called HillaryIs44.com. 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.

And it reads like The Warrior’s Id. Hillary “took on” a journalist this week and “beat him into submission.” Bloomberg has “stripped himself of allies” in “New York’s cutthroat politics.” “Expect stormy days ahead for Bloomberg,” who will wind up “lonely.” Republicans “will attempt to rip him to shreds.” “A May surprise announcement will be met with mounds of research accumulated over the next 11 months.”

In tone the site is very Tokyo Rose.

Encouraging readers to send in “confidential tips,” its primary target and obvious obsession is Barack Obama…

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. It coexists with the Maya Angelou part, the listening tour part, the filmed parts.

It is the war room part. I suspect the site is a back door to that war room.

…[I]f Mrs. Clinton’s aides want to understand better her likability problem, they should look at this site. It’s dark in there.

Note all the insinuations that Clinton’s campaign is involved with the site: “[T]here is another side of the Clinton campaign, and I found some of it this week,” “This appears to be the subterranean part of Hillary’s campaign,” “I suspect the site is a back door to [Clinton’s] war room.” But there’s no evidence that any of these suggestions are true. The website states “We are not affiliated with the Hillary For President Exploratory Committee, or any official Hillary Clinton organization in any way” and the domain is registered anonymously. In short, Noonan is asserting a connection based on sheer speculation.