Hillary’s bad debate performance was corporate-media hype.

[Bo Bike]

At the time she looked good and then the CM feeding frenzy began.

Weekly Update from Media Matters for America

A "terrible" performance

The dominant political story of the past week and a half has been Hillary Clinton's performance in the October 30 Democratic presidential debate. During and immediately after the debate, the general consensus was certainly not that Clinton had fallen on her face. As Eric Boehlert explained this week:

What was interesting about the debate was that commentators who later described the night as a train wreck for Clinton were surprisingly subdued as the debate unfolded in real time. It was only later, as the pundits fed off each other and whipped themselves into a frenzy, that the reviews become increasingly harsh, to the point where it was written in Beltway stone that Clinton had absolutely bombed during the debate; a "debacle."

But again, as it unfolded live, that's not how it was reported. For instance, live-blogging the debate at abcnews.com, Rick Klein, who later hyped the dire debate consequences for Clinton at ABC's The Note, wrote at 9:33 p.m.: "Clinton is strong, concise, and sharp tonight. She is finding ways to contrast herself with the Bush administration even while defending herself."

By 10:35 p.m., Klein wished the two-hour debate was over already: "The last few minutes remind me of why debates should end at 90 minutes. Less energy on the stage, and fewer interesting things to be said."

Time's Ana Marie Cox also wrote about the debate in real time. At 10:53 p.m., Cox wrote that Clinton had made her "first mistake of the night" -- an hour and 53 minutes into the debate, and about nine minutes before the end.

But as the media feeding frenzy continued, the pundit class convinced themselves that Clinton had turned in the worst debate performance in years. It was "terrible," the New York Post announced more than a week later.

Time's Mark Halperin declared it "disastrous" and a "failure." According to Halperin, Clinton was "shrill" and "too hot tempered." The Politico's Roger Simon agreed that Clinton "really" had a "bad night" -- but Simon insisted that Clinton "seemed largely emotionless and detached." Given that two such esteemed journalists agreed that Clinton had a horrible night, but did so based on directly contradictory reasons, it's easy to suspect that no matter what Clinton had done during the debate, the pundits would have criticized her.

Didn’t something like this happen to Al Gore in 1999??? YES!!! I just hope the American people don’t fall for this kind of crap again.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200711100004?f=s_search