1460 Blog

Over at Vanity Fair is an article about Democratic Party political consultants Peter Daou and James Boyce suing Arianna Huffington over who gets credit for the concepts behind the Huffington Post.

The author is Reporter William D Cohen, with photographs by Julian Dufort.

The basic argument is that after the defeat of Senator John F Kerry in 2004, Mssrs Daou and Boyce decided that a lack of a Drudge Report on the Democratic Party side was critical.

[Boyce] remembers coming across a statistic—whether true or not is unclear—that in the last 24 hours of the election some 36 million people had visited the Drudge Report.  The numbers swirled in his head—125 million voters, 36 million people on Drudge, and the election was lost because of around 100,000 voters in Ohio—and he had his eureka moment:  “John Kerry lost that election because he did not have a Drudge,” he says.  “That’s why we lost.”

Needed—A Democratic Party version of the Drudge Report.

They wrote a memo and they met with Ms Huffington and about a dozen others to debrief the Kerry loss.  The rest is history, except for the credit for the idea.  Ms Huffington claims the credit.  Blogger Andrew Brightbart claims credit.  And so do Mssrs Daou and Bryce.  They just want their fair share of the glory.

The term 1460 comes from Mssrs Daou and Bryce and is the number of days between Presidential Elections.

Hat tip to the Drudge Report.

NB:  This was not what I promised my lunch companions I wold post.  That will be next.

Regards  —  Cliff