No, this is not a Daddy Democrat endorsement. (Let me repeat that: NOT an endorsement.) And while we know it was not intended as an endorsement from Yahoo, more than a few eyebrows were raised when people saw this as the lead item on one the Internet’s top portals:

On their blog, Yahoo made an accompanying statement that the forum is open to other candidates, but that didn’t stop plenty of commenters from crying “foul.” Future installments will allow Yahoo to establish their commitment to equal time, but in the meantime, it might have been advisable to more clearly establish that Yahoo is not an extension of the HRC campaign. (Update - for Megan, that’s Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

In terms of political marketing, there’s an interesting–and almost certainly calculated–approach to establishing the Hillary brand. After all, Clinton already has set ideas about how to address healthcare (endorsed by Newt Gingrich, no less) and policy directions aren’t going to be discovered or influenced by a blog’s comment section.
But it does continue her trend of establishing that “Hillary Clinton listens,” perhaps sending signals that a woman nominee for President can be counted on to have a more consultative, less authoritarian style.

It’s interesting to contrast this approach to discussing health care reform with her first famous attempts, which were vilified by Republicans in the 1994 midterm election cycle. Back then, she was famously linked to elaborate flow charts of governmental beurocracy. Almost 15 years later, she is asking Joe Yahoo for our ideas, pictured with her head cocked, in a gesture of supportive attention.