2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumNate Silver: The Media Underestimated Hillary Clinton. It Overestimated Her Debate
Somehow, the media judged Clintons night to be way better than pretty good. CNNs Van Jones declared Clintons performance to be flawless and compared her to Beyonce. Mark Halperin gave Clinton a perfect A. The New York Times, which has been very tough on Clinton, was full of praise for her tonight.
So you can expect the Clinton comeback narrative to prevail over the Clinton in disarray narrative at least for a few news cycles.
The difference between FiveThirtyEights view of the debate and Mark Halperins or The New York Times is that weve been skeptical of the Clinton in disarray narrative for a long time. While Clinton isnt inevitable, she has a lot of things going for her, with near-unanimous support from the Democratic establishment, high favorability ratings among Democrats (even as her ratings have fallen among independents), and a solid lead in national polls that appears to have stabilized recently. Nor are her opponents in much of a position to topple her. Sanders has won plenty of support from white liberal Democrats, but not very much from Hispanics, African-Americans or white moderates. Joe Biden isnt running yet and would have lots of potential problems if he did, especially given his extremely late start to the race. Martin OMalley is at 0.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
From our vantage point, then, declaring a Clinton comeback is a bit like declaring Tom Brady or LeBron James to be the comeback player of the year. Clinton didnt have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last nights debate by a lot.
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538 Staff gave Clinton an A- versus a B for Sanders.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/first-democratic-debate-hillary-clinton/
I self-deleted another post on this topic, as it was about Nate tweeting his thoughts on the debate. Since then he wrote up a more complete article that is more apropos for an OP.
murielm99
(30,771 posts)We all knew she would shine in the debates. Hillary is going to make a great President.
Fearless
(18,421 posts)It's saying that the media is making things up right?
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Fearless
(18,421 posts)You've literally just drudged up a random sentence that alone seems pro-Hillary and suggested that it some how negates the fact that Bernie won the debate.
So you're basically saying she didn't have to win the debate... so she clearly won the debate.
You're not even talking it circles, more like squiggles.
randome
(34,845 posts)But 'very well' adds up to more for Clinton than it does for Sanders. Clinton is still way ahead in the polls.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)538 staff have Clinton an A- versus a B for Bernie.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Clinton didnt have anything to come back from; she was winning the nomination race before last nights debate by a lot.
Fearless
(18,421 posts)trumad
(41,692 posts)Nice try though.
eridani
(51,907 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)Not because I thought her campaign was "in disarray."
But because she was smoother tonight than she was in her debates with Obama I watched 8 years ago.
moobu2
(4,822 posts)was almost perfect. Bernie was okay, but he just said the same stuff he always says in every speech. Boring really.
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)"evolving" is so much more exciting!
cprise
(8,445 posts)from the Hillary we knew from NAFTA to the TPP.
enid602
(8,658 posts)It seemed she was not really debating Bernie, but rather her detractors. Not a bad strategy.
Gothmog
(145,631 posts)The meme that the Clinton campaign is in disarray was really dumb. The Clinton campaign is a well oiled machine and is doing great