ABC Debate Backlash: It Wasn't About Clinton V. Obama

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 10:11 AM on April 20, 2008.

I had thought there was something of a consensus in Democratic circles about Wednesday night’s ABC-sponsored debate in Philadelphia. Dems hated it because Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent most of the debate obsessing over trivia and process, and when they got around to substance, they framed the questions in conservative ways. Republicans loved the debate, because it played out exactly as they wanted. Journalists and media critics hated it because it was a train-wreck.

Somehow, over the last few days, this consensus has been replaced by a new Clinton-Obama dynamic that doesn’t make any sense to me.

The Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei argued the negative reaction to the debate has been driven by “Obama partisans … who are doing the whining.”

The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.

Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions — a mix of fair and impertinent — he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters.

But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.

The response was itself a warning about a huge challenge for reporters in the 2008 cycle: preserving professional detachment in a race that will likely feature two nominees, Obama and John McCain, who so far have been beneficiaries of media cheerleading.

To hear Harris and VandeHei tell it, when journalists trash Clinton, bloggers and media elites sit on their hands. When they trash Obama, as they did on Wednesday night, those same voices rise up in righteous indignation.

I think this badly misses the point of the reaction to the debate. Indeed, I think it’s largely factually wrong, too.

First, my sense is that critics of the Philadelphia debate made no distinction between Clinton and Obama. The problem was that Gibson and Stephanopoulos did a poor job with both candidates. Clinton and Obama were both subjected to unimportant questions about process and mini-controversies, and then both were quizzed on substantive issues from a conservative point of view.

Observers were saying, “Why devote the first hour to nonsense?” not, “Why were you mean to Obama?”



Second, the assertion that somehow observers have been passive about anti-Clinton attacks in the media strikes me as completely mistaken.

As Steve M. noted the other day, there was significant push-back last fall against ridiculous Democratic debate moderators when Clinton was the principal target; and Digby also highlighted the fact that bloggers were nearly apoplectic towards MSNBC when Chris Matthews (among others) kept peddling misogynistic nonsense, most of which targeted Clinton.

Does everything have to be seen through a Clinton vs. Obama lens? Can’t an awful debate be described as such because it really was awful, not because one candidate felt the brunt of the inanity more than the other?



For many Dems, the dynamic that matters here is Democrats vs. the media, not Clinton vs. Obama.


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Tagged as: gibson, clinton, obama, stephanopoulis, abc debate

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.