Tuesday’s debate shows that despite all the media claims to the contrary Hillary Clinton is still easily winning the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Compared to antics of the previous two Republican presidential debates, Tuesday night’s debate between the Democrats proved to be a pretty tame affair. Even the political media’s reviews where pretty boring and predictable with most pundits and journalists declaring that Hillary won the debate after Bernie Sanders failed to perform, Martin O’Malley sleepwalked through the night, and Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee reminded everyone that they aren’t really mainstream Democrats at all.
Jonathan Chait gave a typical analysis along these lines in which Hillary turned around her failing campaign in the nick of time with a brilliant performance:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent most of the last year descending inexorably into depression and even panic. But the first Democratic presidential debate may have finally turned the tide, or at least stopped her fall. Clinton demonstrated that she was, by far, the best presidential candidate onstage. Indeed, she may have been the only person onstage actually running for president. Lincoln Chafee touted his lack of scandals as an oblique contrast to the front-runner. Martin O’Malley tried to play up his more left-wing position on the Glass-Steagall financial regulations. But none of them waged the kind of frontal assault that would be required to dislodge a front-runner who commands Clinton’s breadth of institutional support. Indeed, in what may be the most important moment of the debate, Bernie Sanders declared, to her insufficiently suppressed delight, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
Personally I think this sort of analysis is pretty weak tea. As anyone following FiveThrityEight’s fun endorsement tracker (or other similar tools) could tell you, Hillary has only extended her lead in terms of support from Democrats in elected office and other measures of party support in recent months. And while Bernie Sanders has finally succeeded in getting some support from his fellow members of Congress, Hillary remains the almost unanimous choice of her party’s major office holders.
Instead all the talk about Hillary’s big come back just reflects the incentives journalists have to create exciting “down to the wire” narratives for political races. After all editors and readers aren’t very interested in reading about stable races with a clear front-runner extending her lead. And since “Democrats in disarray” has been a favorite meme of the political media for some time now the Chait style “Hillary’s big comeback” stories practically write themselves.
Unfortunately for the chattering classes the reality of the Democratic side of thing in the 2016 cycle has been incredibly stable. Hillary was almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee before and after the debate and neither a stellar nor a terrible single debate performance was going to change that. If Democratic party actors like members of Congress, important fundraisers, and governors started to abandon her in large numbers then we might really have a panicky campaign and a party in disarray on our hands. But we don’t have that going on at all.
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Photo by Cliff Owen/AP
Source: 30dB.com – Hillary Clinton