Depending on whom you listen to, either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton won the first Democratic debate of the 2016 presidential election season. The mainstream media – from print to TV – all marched in lock step and declared Hillary the winner.
But all the measures available regarding the people who were watching – from the CNN and Fox Focus Groups, the online polls and, most importantly, the online and social media metrics –all point to Bernie as the big winner of the night.
It really doesn’t matter who won, and we won’t actually know until the next wave of actual “scientific” polling is released who got the biggest bump. And many far smarter than me were right when they said the Democratic Party and the American people won. Those are true points. It’s nice to see some actual adults talking about actual issues that affect this nation.
My point in calling out the disconnect between what the pundits are saying and what the data is telling us is to say that the times have changed. Old school punditry is going to have to take a back seat to new world metrics. Stay tuned.
Howie Klein joins me from the Blue America PAC and Down with Tyranny each Thursday morning, and yesterday he wrote a piece that asks the same questions I raised this morning, “So Who Really Won?”. We talked about that and the latest ethics problems to plague the Benghazi Select Committee!
And every other Thursday morning, it’s Driftglass of his blog and the Professional Left Podcast who also had some of the same debate observations as I, and had a few choice words to say about David Brooks. (What else is new??)
Now I’m off to read The Drone Papers… you probably should too!
Tomorrow, Julianna Forlano and a musical blast from my radio past will help us end this week, radio or not!
