Elizabeth Warren - rock star (not).

Earlier I posted about Hillary Clinton losing here cache with the progressive left - and that includes the Huffington Post, which has somehow successfully managed to pass itself off as the being in the center of the political spectrum.  As proof, take a look at this other recent post in the Huffington Post with the headline "Rock Star Elizabeth Warren".

The story links to the original Washington Post article which is somewhat more muted in it's assessment, though not entirely unfavorable:

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — Populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) got a rock-star reception during a standing-room-only campaign rally here Monday, as hundreds of liberal activists cheered her broadsides against corporate interests and voiced hopes that her presence might shift the political winds in an increasingly Republican state.

Here's a news flash for the progressive Huffington Post - 100s of supporters is not a Rock Star. A rally in an "increasingly Republican state" does not make her a Rock Star in that state. In short - she's not a rock star. Sorry. (But not really).

Thursday Hillary Bash - Losing the Left

Has the dependable liberal Huffington Post turned on Hillary Clinton?  In a post to follow this one, the Washington Post talks about Elizabeth Warren's rock star status on the left.  With that happening and now HuffPo clearly less enamored with Hillary, is her star starting to fade, long before the 2016 presidential contest begins?

As far as the far left goes, it sure seems to be the case.  It's not just that Post Huffington is questioning Hillary's credentials, it's how they are doing it.  The salvo clearly comes from the populist left;

In 1992, a 44-year-old attorney made the following remarkable assertion: "For goodness' sake, you can't be a lawyer if you don't represent banks."

The attorney was Hillary Clinton...

Having been an attorney briefly myself, my reaction upon hearing her comment was: "I know nearly a hundred lawyers, but not one represents a bank." My lawyer friends worked for unions, tenants, immigrants, indigent criminal defendants, civil liberties, civil rights, battered women, prisoners on death row, etc. (Which explains why I wasn't a great fit in corporate media.)

Read the last paragraph in the article - Hillary Clinton is part of "the same old Democratic players". Ouch. The left doesn't like her. Maybe she can still win the Democratic nomination without the backing of the progressive left, but her job will be a lot harder. And momentum can have a curious effect, as Hillary herself knows from 2008.

AOL and Huffington train wreck

Train wreck

Does this train wreck make any sense? AOL is buying The Huffington Post in an effort to do what? Rebuild it's online empire, which has faltered over the last decade?

As Business Management noted last spring,

Last year AOL finally parted company with Time Warner after one of the most disastrous mergers in business history. Since buying Time Warner for $160 billion in 2001, AOL has hemorrhaged cash and market share after a string of bad decisions stemming from faulty predictions about the direction of web growth.

So AOL is betting on The Huffington Post to overcome a decade of decline? It's not going to happen. While The Huffington Post is a heavy hitter as blogs go, it's no media empire. The business model for AOL isn't the same as HuffPo either. Despite that, Bloomberg reports;

AOL Inc.’s deal to purchase the Huffington Post is more than a bet on the website’s financial prospects. It’s a wager on the ability of co-founder Arianna Huffington to build an online media empire, analysts say.

Under the $315 million acquisition agreement, Huffington, 60, will join AOL and become president and editor-in-chief of a newly formed media group. In the position, she’ll oversee all of New York-based AOL’s content, from the TechCrunch blog to the Patch local news sites to new content initiatives.

While the goal is to help AOL become a more powerful force in online advertising, there’s a risk in putting Huffington in charge of editorial, said Rob Enderle, a San Jose, California- based technology consultant. Her political views, often critical of corporations and Republicans, may be polarizing, he said.

Brent Bozell analyzed it the following way,

"They must be in such dire straits that they’ve been blinded by the millions and think an acquisition of The Huffington Post is worth sacrificing credibility and objectivity,” Bozell said. "AOL News is fooling only itself in thinking there is no journalistic conflict in merging with a hate-filled, vicious, radically left-wing rag.”

It goes beyond Bozell's comments however. AOL has a poor track record at mergers and acquisitions. In fact ever since it lost it's near monopoly on the Internet in the early days it has done far more faltering than anything else. This will not help AOL and it is far more likely to be yet another nail in the corporate coffin.