Earlier this week Bill O’Reilly unleashed an attack on the Yearly Kos convention — calling Daily Kos “one of the worst examples of hatred America has to offer” after citing a handful of reader comments out of thousands. He then singled out JetBlue, one of the convention’s corporate sponsors, and chastised them for sponsoring the convention. While O’Reilly’s hyperbole isn’t surprising, it shows such a lack of understanding for how the blogosphere operates that even presidential candidates have come to Yearly Kos’ defense.

When O’Reilly’s team approached Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd campaigns (and probably others) for followup comments, both campaigns forcefully responded in support of Kos. “Blogs are the 21st Century version of the public square,” responded Clinton’s communication director, Howard Wolfson. “Sen. Clinton does not agree with everything said on Daily Kos, but isolating a few comments as a way to smear a blog frequented by hundreds of thousands of people a day is wrong… it’s not reasonable for you to attribute every comment on Daily Kos to everyone who attends the YearlyKos convention.”

And Hari Sevugan, Chris Dodd’s communciation director, also defended the site: “The Daily Kos community is populated by a diverse cross-section of the American public — patriotic citizens participating in political debate. And as with every political debate there will be a wide range of ideas, many of which Senator Dodd does not agree with.” Kudos to both campaigns for coming out so strongly in support of the DailyKos, and for publicly calling out O’Reilly, who’s reached a new low.