The Cyber Squatter and a Digital Snatcher: Selling the Clinton Campaign Website to a Candidate Without A Credit Card

In August 2020, anticipating Harris might run again in the future, he snapped up 15 Harris-related domain names, combined with “every sort of folksy white man I could think of who was big at the time.” Other notables are Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman and the governors of Washington and Illinois.

Eche, who went by Jeremy Peter Green before he married, told NPR’s Morning Edition at the time that he was living in a basement and off of credit card debt, and hoping to sell the domain for at least $10,000. But the Clinton campaign only offered $2,000.

He calls himself a cybersquatter and also a domain snatcher. I use it because it’s still accurate, even though it’s a pejorative term.

A few times a year, Eche goes on a buying spree on sites like GoDaddy and Name.com, purchasing domain names for all sorts of hypothetical presidential tickets.

It’s largely guesswork, though Eche keeps up with politics (he’s a member of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter) and links his knack for recognizing rising political stars to his college gig as an autograph dealer.

He owned ClintonKaine.com back in 2016 when the then-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton picked Virginia’s Tim Kaine. He had also claimed ClintonBooker.com, anticipating a ticket with New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and ClintonBiden.com in case Joe Biden was her running mate.

He says he ultimately sold the site for $15,000 to a different, anonymous buyer, which turned out to be the Trump campaign. They used the website to publish anti-Clinton news during the election.

The Harris-Pritzker website: An investment for a candidate running in the 2020 midterm election, and why he wouldn’t run

Harris doesn’t know the Minnesota governor or the former congressman. But his speech with Harris in Philadelphia Tuesday introducing the Harris-Walz ticket to the country made his appeal clear.

Eche could not have known that this election cycle would be filled with twists and turns and then the Democrats chose Harris as their nominee, and then President Biden withdrew from the race.

“I feel a little bit like someone who went to the Olympics eight years ago and did well and then missed out on it in Tokyo and then came back and got a gold medal again,” Eche said. I feel like the GOAT of this small niche of cybersquatting.

Eche claims he didn’t have time to prepare. In 2016, he embellished ClintonKaine.com with homemade comics and fan fiction, to give people something to look at. He had enough time to make a single meme, which was suggested by his wife.

The Harris-Walz website bears the now-familiar green background and all lowercase “walz,” mirroring the aesthetic of Charli XCX’s widely-memed album “Brat.” The Harris-Pritzker site looks the same, only with “prit.” Clicking on those two pages takes users to Eche’s online marketplace, with a list of other hypothetical Harris domains and the option to buy HarrisWalz.com.

It says that the domain’s value will be retained if Harris runs in the next election in two years. “This makes them an excellent investment.”

He has 10 different domains for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who many expect will run in the future. If she ran with him, he’d include Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly andIllinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth. He is offering them 3,400 dollars per person.

“Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires and then wrote a best seller trashing that community. Come on. That’s not what middle America is. And I gotta tell you. I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

The Democratic Party has had an elitist problem. It started before Trump with Republicans calling them “Limousine Liberals” and “latte-drinking liberals.” It is more acute now in the age of Trump. Democrats haven’t been able to connect with the working-class white voters the way the party did decades ago. Walz gave a roadmap for how to talk to them, maybe even saying the same words as others but delivered in a more authentic way.

And he talked about being a high school teacher and a football coach. One of his former football players was on CNN after the speech, talking about how Walz helped him and was a father figure, as he was raised by a single mom.

He spoke about growing up in a rural community, how neighbors treat each other, how he did not compromise on his values, and much more.

“I see you down there, white guys,” Tim Walz tells the nation: “What’s up, black guys,” and “what’s going on”

Walz talked about being a good shot, one of the best, when he was in Congress. In fact, he had a camouflage hat on in the video when he received the call from Harris to be her VP.

Some of us recall when the Republicans were talking about freedom. It turns out now what they meant was that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make. Even if we didn’t make the same choice, there was still a golden rule, “Mind your own damn business.” ”

“I see you down there. I see those old, white guys,” he said, jokingly pointing to others in the front rows before delivering a pretty progressive message:

He is a white guy. Harris is a black woman, and part of his duty as a running mate is to testify to groups that might be hesitant of the person at the top. White guys might be reassured by a woman as president when there hasn’t been a woman in the office.

Source: Takeaways from Tim Walz’s introduction to the national stage

Walz ain’t from San Francisco, but a cuff is an elephant: Where is the elephant in the room?

Walz ain’t from San Francisco. He made that clear Tuesday night. He said that the elephant in the room was something off the cuff.

He didn’t dwell on the “weird” attack line he wrote against Donald Trump and his running mate, so he was the one who used it.