The big news in the liberal blogosphere on Monday was Joe Wilson’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton. The news of the endorsement went out to the blogs first via a conference call. The conference call is a major effort in reach out to the blogs by the Clinton campaign and a very smart move. Although Hillary has taken heat in the liberal blogosphere in the past, and this may not smooth the path 100%, it’s a significant step. The conference call to handful of liberal bloggers was organized by Hillary’s “Director of Online Everything,” Peter Daou.

Peter is one of the savviest bloggers that I know and I feel that Joe Wilson’s endorsement will play big for Hillary. He’s highly respected by the liberal netroots and his endorsement will carry some weight for Hillary, as it did for Kerry in ‘04. I missed the call, but Steve Clemons reports:

During the conference call, Joe Wilson said that he had been friends with Hillary for the last ten years. He stated that he believed that Hillary had emerged as a well-established, serious critic of the Bush administration and felt that she believed that “the Iraq War needed to be ended soon, that troops needed to be removed from harm’s way, and that a political process had to be started, a process that would end the war and preserve some shred of our strategic position in the Middle East.”

Wilson argued that the President had show no leadership in affecting the real political process in Iraq — and that this had to happen and was something Clinton understood. Wilson mentioned that he was involved in helping to get the political circumstances right in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and had later worked with key players before and during the Dayton Accord process. In 1998, Hillary Clinton was pivotal in convincing her husband to travel to Africa — a trip that Wilson was in charge of.

And since the point at which the Bush administration decided to punish Wilson for his efforts to hold the Bush White House accountable for its statements in the lead up to Iraq War II by outing the covert status of his CIA-employed wife, Valerie Plame — Hillary Clinton had reached out repeatedly to the Wilsons. She helped advise, counsel, and compare the experiences Joe and Valerie Wilson were having in the Republican meat-grinder with her own experiences in the same situation.

As a Democrat, I’ve held back on making any decisions about who I am going to support in the ‘08 presidential race as of yet, because I’m not too excited about any of the candidates, quite honestly. But, I have found it interesting to see the heavy weight endorsements that Hillary has racked up of late, including former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. 

The think the presidential race is still wide open on both sides of the aisle. As a blogger who was involved with the Kerry campaign from the early days (starting in July ‘03), I know full well that anything can happen before the primaries and a candidate can come from behind and take the nomination as Kerry did. However, I do see Hillary with some significant endorsements including two that Kerry also had early in the ‘04 race, Wilson and Villaraigosa.

Cross posted with edits from The Democratic Daily.