Blog: Media Gives First Debate Win to Clinton

It's hard remembering a Presidential debate performance that provoked so much mainstream media fawning. Reading the headlines today, the pundits appeared so enamored with Hillary Clinton you'd think she’d unveiled a cancer cure during last night’s first Democratic Party debate in Las Vegas.

"Hillary Clinton towers over her debate rivals," read the Washington Post. "Hillary Clinton Dominates First Democratic Debate, Analysts Say," according to the Wall Street Journal. "Hillary Clinton Schools Her Rivals," said Bloomberg. "Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Debate Magic," wrote the New York Times' Frank Bruni.

The political blogs were also smitten over Clinton’s execution. Politico championed Clinton the "clear winner" in the debate: "A runaway victory for Clinton," its headline read. Slate, meanwhile, charged that "Hillary Clinton Won the CNN Debate With a Surprisingly Spectacular Performance."

One thing is certain: after stewing in turmoil for months, after enduring yet another politically motivated witch hunt disguised as a Benghazi investigation, or the ongoing scandal regarding her email use while Secretary of State, Clinton finally turned the tables last night. Make no mistake, she put on a stunning show, which isn't a surprise, given Clinton’s mastery as a speaker and her decades of debate experience (she's been married to Bill Clinton for forty years, after all). She appeared poised, practiced, presidential.

But regarding those accolades: what was it that makes her the clear victor of last night's debate? After taking in the deluge of pundit-gushing over her performance, I'm left wondering if this is another case of a mainstream media that latches onto image and willfully ignores substance in the process.

By far, Clinton’s biggest score came pretty much out of the gate, after Anderson Cooper put her on high-alert with his first question, regarding her history of routinely switching stances — as they apply to same-sex marriage, her policies on immigration, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. What followed was misdirection so thick you could cut it with a knife, as she used the question to deflect onto Senator Bernie Sanders’ gun control voting record. Sanders, who appeared unprepared for this, didn’t adequately recover from the blow.

The tactic proved to be a template for the rest of the evening. After stating she'd been politically consistent her entire career (a joke?), then calling herself as a “progressive” (I must have missed that meeting), she qualified that statement with the claim that she belongs to a new breed of progressive who likes to “get things done” (a line she liked so much she ended up using it twice). She also implied that being a woman somehow disqualifies any association with the status quo.

You see how this works. “Progressive!” (applause). “Change agent!” (applause). “Woman!” (applause). It all sounded great on stage, but in the midst of this paint-by-numbers pandering, were we getting anything resembling a believable, consistent, coherent policy message? As the Atlantic wrote last night, Clinton’s experience is actually her worst enemy right now. Her voting record counterbalances many of her claims, renders them hollow messages, and though she definitely brought the rhetoric last night, it left me wondering if that’s all we were getting.

When it comes to substance, one could make the argument that the best effort last night came from Sanders, who, despite behaving like someone’s cantankerous grandfather, eschewed rhetoric in favor of outlining policy points with noted clarity. Of course, Sanders also has a consistent voting record, offers a more compelling message than his fellow candidates, and is not taking PAC money. Maybe that doesn’t make for good television.

Interestingly enough, when new media metrics come into play, Sanders also walked off the debate stage a winner in several regards. He surged on Google Trends during the debates, becoming the most searched candidate as the event aired. His crowd-pleasing defense of Clinton’s “damn emails” became the most widely quoted comment from any candidate on Twitter. And Political site The Hill reported today that Sanders’ campaign managed to raise $1.3 million in just four hours after last night’s event. Splitting with the standard media narrative, The Washington Post’s the Fix blog even went so far as to call Sanders winner of last night’s debate.

Next time Sanders goes up against Clinton on live TV, perhaps he should remember the age-old adage that image is everything.