There was a particular moment in tonight’s Democratic debate that Josh Marshall thinks “will become a Rorschach for voters around the country”. I think that might be right, but only because news outlets (beginning with his own) will play it stripped of its context.
My take on it at the time is summed up by what I said to friends of mine: “Wow, she sure gets shrill when she attacks her opponents and has it blow up in her face.”
I don’t think it’s quite fair to show just her “impassioned or enraged response” (Marshall’s words for it) without also showing the context that led to it, which requires going all the way back to the start of the discussion, when she starts in on Obama.
All of that is necessary context to understand, watch, and come to an opinion on that clip which Marshall embeds and which news outlets will show in the same context-free manner.
Left to play on its own, without the surrounding context, one almost forces a Rorschach-like response to it, because you’ve stripped it of its origins, and left pretty much only the voter’s pre-existing opinion through which they filter how they view Hillary and her campaign.
What seemed to play out was that Clinton launched into an attack upon Obama, Obama adeptly deflected and deflated it, and Edwards stepped in to suggest that such attacks are what happens when the status quo feels threatened.
In other words, the tag team of Obama and Edwards turned Clinton’s attempted trap for Obama back around on to her.
That’s what leads directly into the clip that Marshall shows without its context. What’s happening there is that Clinton, in essence, freaked out because not only did her attack fail, it got shown up for the desperate attack that it was.
She got defensive. And becoming defensive, she got shrill. That wasn’t passion or outrage.
It was a little bit of panic.
Addendum: TalkLeft also shows the clip without its context, calls it the “passion moment” and preemptively accuses anyone who calls it something else a sexist. (Sorry, but that’s the sort of discussion-stopping smear that the Republicans use. I thought you all were supposed to be the antidote to that kind of nonsense.)
Crooks and Liars at least limits itself to calling Clinton’s moment “vigorous”, and actually manages to cough up the full clip, and not just the out-of-context clip of Clinton only.
