Have "the media" done a Hillary flip? No.

Whither the media's loathing of Hillary Clinton? I can't find it. Granted, my morning survey of stories, news, headlines and tweets about yesterday's Benghazi spectacle has been unscientific. On the other hand, I haven't skimped. And nowhere can I find anything negative about Hillary Clinton's appearance. The media's famous (or rather famously touted) Hillary-loathing, Hillary-bashing or anything even resembling Hillary-hostility just isn't there.

The reviews are in, and they rave. Why do they rave about Clinton's performance? A simple question, which earns a simple answer: Hillary, as experienced committee-testifier John Dean said yesterday on MSNBC, delivered "a textbook example of how to be a good witness." She was flawless. She was poised, knowledgeable and devastatingly gracious in the face of naked Republican aggression. In the Olympics of imbecility-hurdling, she scored a perfect 10. Hers was impeccable political athleticism in motion.

Indeed it was so impeccable, Bloomberg Politics has a roundup of right-wing despair at yesterday's Republican self-embarrassment. In sum, "Many conservative commentators were unimpressed," writes Bloomberg, "if not angry with the proceedings." For example Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller — a cauldron of reactionary hysteria on a par with RedState.com's — "sounded the alarm mid-afternoon," as Bloomberg puts it. Or, as Lewis put it, "it's starting to look like Hillary Clinton won't merely survive this hearing -- she will have come out on top." Speaking of RedState, its chief neurotic, Erick Erickson, described the committee's proceedings as mostly "a carnival road show of back bench congresscritters playing to the cameras and Hillary Clinton working hard to play persecuted victim." We can all agree, I think, that that was an easy role.

I watched the proceedings on C-Span, and during committee breaks I listened to Republican callers on the network's Batshit hotline. They were in an anticipatory frenzy, for even they could appreciate the Republican fiasco unfolding before them. It seems the masochistically inclined among them had to watch much of the proceedings on C-Span, because, as Bloomberg further reports, Fox News, "which has taken a special interest in the issue of Benghazi in recent years, cut away from the hearing midway through." Roger Ailes couldn't take it.

In the wake of GOP entombment I flipped to CNN, and virtually all of its commentators were either horrified by Republican committee members (David Gergen cast them as borderline barbaric) or toasting President Hillary with cognac (Carl Bernstein was positively orgasmic, having seen Lowryesque "little starbursts through the screen … ricocheting around the living rooms of America").

Rush Limbaugh? Yesterday he reminded the dittoheads that he foresaw the media's "script" three days before the hearing: "[One] way of seeing the optics today is the way the Drive-Bys [i.e., the media] will position it for the low-information voters. And it'll go something like this: A lonely, valiant and brave Hillary Clinton sits alone under the glaring lights, being interrogated by a nearly all-white Republican committee on her role in American foreign policy in the Middle East." And you know what? Limbaugh is largely correct. Except for his obligatory emphases on "low-information voters" (all those who don't listen to Limbaugh) and "all-white" Republicans, that is precisely how Hillary's performance is being reviewed.

Because … it's true, for Christ's sake. Limbaugh's sarcasm makes it no less true, and even he can see that. His alarm is palpable.

All of this begs two questions. Why was there so much media negativity about Hillary the 2008 politician (which extended up until yesterday)? Because Hillary was a consistently lousy presidential candidate. Why was there so much media favorability about Obama the 2008 politician? Because he was a consistently splendid presidential candidate.

Note to Camp Clinton: When your candidate performs well, she gets good press. It's as simple as that. There is no mainstream media conspiracy here; no early-morning meetings of journalistic titans who loathe Hillary and long to bash her out of some sinister hostility to all things HRC. Equally, there is no Limbaugh-portrayed media conspiracy to cast Hillary as "valiant and brave," as well as politically and presidentially capable. By and large, Hillary gets the press she deserves. Today, she is getting good press — deservedly. That may change tomorrow, and undoubtedly it will change, from time to time, throughout the next 12 months. But the change hinges on Hillary — not some media cabal hellbent on Hillary-bashing.

I offer this sincerely — as sound advice, for Camp Clinton's own benefit. Whenever Hillary supporters explode in rage over one of the media's "typical" Hillary-bashing binges, they sound, in reverse, just like the right — which sees wicked "liberal media" everywhere. This behooves them not, and does their candidate no good. ConspiracyThink only marginalizes the Clinton campaign — which, at the moment, is on one helluva roll — just as ConspiracyThink has marginalized the right into a joke.    

 

Comments

[Bob]

There's no reason to expect the more mainstream media to fawn over HRC, nor to bash her. It's more subtle than that. It's the viewing of the world through the lens of corporate values or maintaining an affected fairness. When I checked this morning Google news made no mention of the hearing on its main page. In brief summary, the nearly unanimous take in the major online newspapers is that nothing new was revealed in the hearing, but several mention that HRC should have been grilled about why she supported the Libya policy. That's probably true, but very little effort was spent pointing out how irrelevant the Republicans' questions were, nor how inappropriate their demeanor. Political sites were all over the map, but a piece in The Hill is a good example of phoney "balance":

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/257806-the-biggest-moments-of-clintons-benghazi-hearing

Note the closing sentence: "This year’s revelation about her exclusive use of a private email server only came out because of the work of the Benghazi committee." Right. And the revelation about Monica's blue dress only came out after 3 or 4 years of not finding anything else to gin up.

[Bob]

Btw, Vox also has an amusing summary of conservative bitching: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/22/9600096/clinton-benghazi-hearing

[shsavage]

Those poor GOP common-taters, they were hoping that someone on the committee would play the part of Pierre Cauchon but, sadly, they couldn't find a match.

[Peter G]

When grading candidates it is a good thing to keep in mind that there is more than one criterion for what makes a good campaigner. Hillary has some excellent political skills as she just demonstrated. She's one hell of a testifier as she should be given the decades of experience she has in testifying before both the press and more official bodies. And she's one of the best policy wonks in the business. She is not one of the best when it comes to natural communication on the campaign trail. But she's a lot better than she was in 2008.

[Peter G]

Btw Hillary Clinton will be unfairly treated by the press.They have a vested interest in pushing the horse race and will need to load handicaps on her should it look like she's pulling away to an easy victory. Or even if she might win at all. In this respect she will be treated exactly the same as any front runner. On that I would concur. That her performance reviews will hinge entirely on her performances is something to which I could not subscribe. Good performances will merely make it harder to spin the other way.

[David & Son of Duff]

Alas, being a milksop Brit, I could only watch 0.78 miliseconds of the exchange between some thin, ultra-white guy with a smarmy hair-do, and a big fat black guy with a mouth like the Mersey Tunnel, before realising in some horror that these were the, er, 'distinguished Congressmen' purporting to find out those responsible for the deaths of four American public servants. There was also a dumpy little woman with blonded hair and a toothy smile but what she had to do with the proceedings I do not know!

Seriously, I worry for you, America!

[Peter G]

Hell they already knew that Duff ol' man. It was the terrorists who attacked them.

[Turgidson]

(caution - long post of aimless blather to follow)

Have to disagree with the simple "if she's a good candidate she gets good press" algorithm.

Obama didn't suddenly become a bad candidate because the GOP decontextualized "you didn't build that" or had one underwhelming debate.

Clinton was running a good campaign the whole time, doing the hard work of campaigning and organizing on the ground instead of awaiting her coronation (which is what I felt like she was doing at this stage in 2007-8). She ignored the email story because it was bullshit, and as we came to realize through numerous interviews and press conferences, nothing SHE said was going to stamp it out. Douchebags like Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier were going to keep "following" this "story" until they were six feet under. It took a prominent GOP official gloating about it on TV, with an assist from that lovable mensch Bernie Sanders at the debate, for things to turn around. So even now I don't blame Hillary very much for the trajectory of that story. The Clinton Rules exist. And they were in full force, and will return again.

Her campaign miscalculated how long the media could manage to keep dragging the bloated corpse of the email "scandal" out of the ground just to beat it to death again. I confess to being sympathetic to their misjudgment; I called bullshit on that bullshit from the beginning and grossly underestimated the extent to which the mainstream AND right-wing medias were united in their efforts to transmogrify it into a campaign-killing "scandal." But even as the "story" kept reanimating itself like a zombie, I never thought it would ultimately have any role in deciding who the Dem nominee would be, much less who would win the general.

I see the same criticisms being lobbed at Hillary as I saw, and often agreed with, in 2008. But I think she's changed for the better. She's staking out solidly progressive, and admirably detailed and empirical, stances on all the major domestic issues. She's definitely being elusive, if not outright disingenuous on the TPP. I just can't bring myself to care about it. Democrats are always more protectionist as candidates than they are as elected officials. Obama was, Edwards was (don't be fooled - his tribune-of-labor stance as a 2008 candidate was pure expediency), Hillary was. And frankly I'm a little exhausted by the scare campaign the Professional Left has mounted against the TPP. Like most trade deals, I'm sure it's a mixed bag, but it won't end all life on earth like the Sanders brigade keeps saying. Krugman and his ilk are on the fence, if marginally against. Sounds about right. Hillary won't back out of it if elected. So, sure, she's being slippery on that. Yawn.

I dunno, since she reemerged in public after her well-deserved time of rest after stepping down as SOS, I've seen a liberated, relaxed version of Hillary. I think the 2008 loss and service in Obama's cabinet taught her a lot and humbled her. I think she's terse with the media for the same reason Obama often is - she doesn't suffer fools gladly - and I can't blame her for that.

She's become a candidate I can unabashedly support, and all the stupid bullshit she's had to deal with lately has only made it easier for me to do so.

[Peter G]

I've written longer pieces that made a lot less sense than yours. Which my oblique way of saying I agree with you. Krugman's actual opinion is in favor of the TPP but that it's significance is probably not worth the political divisions it is causing in the Democratic party. Hillary's calculation here is awesome. Bernie has to vote on it if it comes before Congress and he is committed to railing against it. This despite the fact that polling clearly shows a significant majority of Democrats, around sixty percent, are in favor of free trade agreements. She need only say that it needs a lot of work to become an acceptable thing. And she does not have to vote on it. Machiavelli would approve.

On the e-mail thing I have speculated that it was a plant. That anything harmful to her by way of e-mails would have been left on her server borders on ludicrous. But it certainly did work as bait for the Republicans on the Benghazi Committee. It did not emerge for any of the other investigations. I would dearly love to know whence came the knowledge of its very existence. If the Clintons did that I humbly bow to their ability at eleventy dimensional political chess.

[Bob]

Thanks for your insights and concern.

[The Dark Avenger]

They are the heirs of the Reagan Revolution, David. The Sans-culottes were running the show, and, as they say on your side of the Atlantic, it resulted in an "own goal".

[Bob]

Damn good for aimless blather. Again we agree on almost everything. The campaign probably didn't miscalculate how long the media could manage to keep flogging the email "scandal," though. That sort of stuff is par for the Clinton course, but they're luckier than they've been in the past with the quality of their enemies.

From the leaked parts of the TPP I've seen the worst of it is in the intellectual property and pharmaceutical areas. One excuse is we're tired of having the Chinese pirate movies and such, but get ready to probably have less public domain material available and to pay more for pills.