If I were like the Huffington Post, this would be a compelling yet deceptively irrelevant headline.

pantone292 — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:18:23 -0800

What's the point of this headline vs. body text bait-and-switch technique? For over 24 hours, this article has been linked on the Huffington Post's front page as "TOP DEMOCRATS TELL CLINTON IT'S OVER"; the headline on the article page itself says "Top Democrats Tell Clinton The Race Is Over".

However, from what I can tell, the article is from May 6 (the day of the IN/NC primaries, not the day after) and is basically a write-up about both candidates' last-minute campaign efforts. It makes no mention of the post-primary state of the race whatsoever, and definitely doesn't provide anything even remotely resembling what the headline promises.

I'd think that it was a mistake, but note that as I said above it has been up like this for over a day, multiple readers have pointed out the disconnect in the comments, and I can only assume multiple readers will have alerted HuffPo staff to it by now.

So I'm still cautiously open to that explanation, but assuming it was intentional: what reasoning could be behind this, other than simply baiting for eyeballs?

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If I were like the Huffington Post, this would be a compelling yet deceptively irrelevant headline.