Have you seen Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker (8/27) on Karl  Rove?  In it you will find an explanation of Rove's electoral success strategies: specific interest grassroots groups organization.  Accordingly, Hillary Clinton demonstrates a similarly successful strategy.  Here's an excerpt:

He [Rove] was consistently better than the other side at reaching the groups that felt shut out of politics, usually through local organizing. There are plenty of these groups on the left as well as on the right, but Democrats have let the muscles needed to reach them grow slack. Organizing is hard, unglamorous work; the language it requires is combative, self-interested, and non-seigneurial. It’s no accident that the fortunes of Hillary Clinton, which Rove spent a good part of last week running down, have risen, and the excitement she generates among liberal élites has fallen, as she has become less focussed on a rhetoric of “vision” and more adept at dealing with interest groups, from dairy farmers to preschool parents and wounded veterans.

So who is it again that thinks Hillary Clinton would be a very bad choice for the Democratic nomination?  Liberal elites maybe?

First, it's certainly someone not at all familiar with the blogging world:

It's time the blogosphere, and people like you, began to clean up your act.

"The blogosphere...", as if it's one thing.

I take it at face value -- a Clinton supporter. Probably around Clinton's age group, not all that savvy online, just started to read blogs, etc, especially since Clinton started her "conversation" on her web site.

This:

And perhaps realize that your unique hits aren't necessarily a measure of your credibility.

What does that even mean? I don't understand, what "hits"? Attacks on Hillary? What would that have to do with credibility? The assumption is, the more you attack Clinton, the more credibility you have with bloggers?

Honestly, this little rant reminds me of our old friend Mary, from Rhode I.

But, anyway, yeah, I think it's an actual pro-HRC supporter. That's my guess.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

I think Josh Marshall has the right interpretation of what is going on here in that he responds facetiously at the end of the two quotes:

But I will try harder to censor inappropriate thoughts.

It's the mixing journalism and political advocacy problem raising it's head here.

The commenter is the type of person who believes that if you have a left-of-center political blog, you should be partisan, supporting all Democratic presidential efforts, not digging up muck for Republicans to throw or causing similar trouble. You should be being a booster. They'd rather see you spend all your time on the digging up muck on the Republican enemy.

Josh Marshall is more interested on the side of being a journalist and figuring out interesting stuff that is going and less interested in advocacy, though he mixes some. When jumping over to advocacy, so far he has picked up pet issues, like Social Security, rather than party or individuals, to advocate for.

When he gives his own opinion on an individual running for office, unlike many in the blogosphere, he uses "I" rather than "we." As in "I must admit that I don't like the idea of Hillary Clinton running because of the inherited office issue." He shares his own feelings with readers only when he wants to bring up the larger point that he thinks is interesting. Otherwise, he keeps his own feelings private, and prefers to cover any poop that he can get on any candidate of either party and the horse races and let the chips fall where they may. This is traditional journalistic orientation, where endorsement is left to the editorial page and even then is left to close to the election so as not to influence until people have had time to judge, and where pundits/op-ed columnists don't straight out personally endorse either, but give opinionated interpretations of the horse races.

The commenter also is like a lot of the more partisan-oriented in the blogosphere (right and left) in that he's screaming "you've become biased in your coverage of Hillary because you don't like her." He cites all the good news about Hillary (debates, polls, grass roots in California) that Josh is overlooking because of his alleged bias.

The "why don't you cover the good news about my person/issue," we have all heard this before, but it is usually targeted at the MSM journalists, that they have bias but cover it up in sneaky manipulative ways.

Hence, the snipe at the end about credibility. He is saying that Josh either doesn't have a clue about how much support Hillary has, which makes him a bad reporter, or that he is covering that news up on purpose, which makes him manipulative. He is also saying "I've got news for you buddy, that even though you think you have power to influence the outcome, your power might not be as much as you think it is."

"So I am curious what Cafe'ers think: is this an actual pro-Hillary statement, a false flag operation, or something else?"

This is the question posed to the readers of this post. My response is that I don't understand why, standing alone, it as all material whether the author of this letter to Josh is genuine or not.

What may be material, I think, is that many real or perceived Hillary supporters (and many real or perceived supporters of other Democrats) are prepared to support whoever gets the Democratic nomination. As a corollary, there are many perceived or real Hillary supporters (as well as supporters of other Democrats) who are concerned that liberals do not eat their young during the primary process by destroying this or that Democratic candidate. And, of course, there are undoubtedly real Hillary supporters who, for purely partisan purposes, would write letters such as the one at issue in this post, suggesting that Hillary's nomination is a done deal.

The flipside to the foregoing is obvious: that most of us posting on the process around here are registered Democrats or are otherwise eligible to participate in a Democratic primary or caucus in a particular state; that we are not potted plants; and therefore the time to debate about the relative merits of the candidates is now.

I do not understand, however, why the true motivations of one correspondent to Josh Marshall, i.e. whether he or she is a false-flagger or eminently genuine, is in any way significant. I guess I assume that, unless there is concrete reason to suggest otherwise, people who write letters to Josh or post comments at the Cafe or elsewhere on the internet believe in the merits of what they write. Perhaps I am naive to so assume.