Cheap shot: Mark Halperin is the Edge

Image by Bravo/Getty Images via HuffPost.

From the Times:

Who Won the Debate? Bernie Sanders Gets the Edge

By ALAN RAPPEPORTMARCH 10, 2016

...While they both parried effectively, many commentators and critics thought Mr. Sanders delivered his most confident performance of the campaign, even as Mrs. Clinton had her moments.

Followed by ten quotes from the commentators and critics: one from Mark Halperin giving Mr. Sanders the edge for his most confident performance of the campaign, two calling it a draw (Josh Marshall and Joy-Ann Reid), three suggesting Clinton stood out for her performance (Patricia Mazzei, Elizabeth Plank) or the difficulty of the questions she was asked (Jerry Seib), one awarding to to the Republicans (Stuart Stevens), and Ann Coulter complaining that Spanish was being spoken in Florida. Oh, Michael Moore complaining that nobody was talking about the poisoned water in Flint (I guess that cheap foreign worker Jorge Ramos won, for his cunning and insidious refusal to ask, "So, candidates, could you just forget about the announced subject of tonight's debate, immigration, which I and the audience are supposedly here to hear about and repeat a bunch of the stuff you said on Sunday? Because that was some really great stuff"). In other words, all the many commentators and critics referred to in Rappeport's intro copy are Mark Halperin.

I do not mean to suggest, and do not even imagine for one minute, that the Times or their reporter or their headline writer or Mark Halperin are jointly or individually spinning this thing for Bernie. Halperin certainly isn't! (Nor do I wish to argue that Sanders did not win the debate or that Clinton did. I would like to argue, if anything, that it was not a school competition, thanks very much. I think it was a pretty good debate in which I learned a lot of useful things about the candidates' views, which is not always the case.)

I think they're unconsciously, or consciously in Halperin's case, spinning for Halperin, because Halperin is the Real Leader of the Village. Halperin won the debate! By saying the thing that Halperin thought was the most interesting-sounding! It's Halperins all the way down!