The NY Post article was featured on the front page of Drudge first in big headline. The press corps traveling with Clinton got calls from their editors who'd seen the story via Drudge shortly after the interview which had been streamed live on the net, per NYT reporter Seelye's blog of that day. (Yes the corporate media gets their stories from Drudge.)
Her interview began while we were on the bus, but Internet access was so poor, we could only pick up bits of her comments intermittently. We did hear her bat back reports that her campaign had made overtures to Senator Barack Obama’s campaign about some kind of deal for her to exit the race.
At the supermarket, we were ensconced in a café off the deli counter, where many reporters were writing about her denying the overtures while also trying to follow the live stream. Here, too, Internet access was spotty and the stream came over in choppy bursts.
Mrs. Clinton arrived from the newspaper in the midst of this, and began addressing a couple of hundred people who were seated adjacent to us, in the fresh produce section. Then our cell phones and Blackberries went off.
On the other end were editors who had seen a Drudge Report link to a New York Post item online. The Post was not with the traveling press — and apparently had a decent Internet connection.
The initial N.Y. Post item read this way: “She is still in the presidential race, she said today, because historically, it makes no sense to quit, and added that, ‘Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June,’ making an odd comparison between the dead candidate and Barack Obama.”
Mrs. Clinton did not make that comparison. Here’s the video and here’s the transcript from the paper’s Web site, though it is not complete.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/on-the-road-clintons-very-bad-day/The NY Post story, with it's spin, was already out via Drudge to the media who was asking Clinton staff about it shortly after the interview. The Obama's campaign email was in response to a story that was already out and getting attention by the media. Again from Seelye's blog of that day:
She was referencing the assassination as a familiar timeline benchmark that might remind listeners that Mr. Kennedy was campaigning in June. (Her references were not quite right, since those campaigns began much later than this one, but that’s another story.) At the same time, she used an eye-popping word in the context of a presidential campaign with a black candidate.
In the deli section, we were seeking reaction from Clinton aides. One of them, Mo Elleithee, who had been with Mrs. Clinton at the editorial meeting, said her comments were being distorted.
A usually mild-mannered man, he was noticeably angry. He gave an on the record statement, saying that any attempt to portray her comment as anything other than a timeline was “inaccurate.” He came back again to add the word “outrageous.”
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, was finishing up her short talk with the people in the produce section, where voters were asking her about her decision to pursue the nomination, often offering words of encouragement. One woman asked her about the once-arcane subject of superdelegates.
“I’m racing against the wind here,” Mrs. Clinton said, noticing that Mr. Obama had the “establishment” endorsements in the state. Afterward, she posed for pictures with workers behind the deli counter and went into a holding room.
By then, the Obama campaign had issued a statement, linking to the Post item and saying her comment “was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.” Privately, we were told, the Obama camp was livid.
As the news whipped around the Web and on cable television. furious comments from readers started piling up on Web sites (including our own).
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/on-the-road-clintons-very-bad-day/ Howler quotes Seelye's article that offers a condensed version, but not Seeley's detailed blog of that day that shows the sequence of events as Seelye herself saw it that day...the NY Post story was out in the media via Drudge and getting their attention before the Obama campaign responded to it.
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