Piling On? A Case Study in Clinton Damage Control

The "piling on" meme, through which the Clinton campaign has portrayed her disastrous debate performance as a case of patriarchial attacks on her candidacy, has generated some interesting discussion. Barack Obama makes the point that Clinton should be touting her experience on the issues, not flashing the gender card (You Tube via Kate Phillips):

Ruth Marcus shreds the piling on meme in her Washington Post commentary:

The Philadelphia debate was not exactly a mob moment to trigger the Violence Against Women Act; if anything, this has been an overly (pardon the phrase) gentlemanly campaign to date. Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that beating up, because she is the strong front-runner, not because she is a weak woman.

And a candidate as strong as Clinton doesn't need to play the woman-as-victim card, not even in "the all-boys club of presidential politics," as Clinton called it in a speech yesterday at her all-women alma mater, Wellesley College. I have a pretty good nose for sexism, and what I detected in the air from Philadelphia was not sexism but the desperation of candidates confronting a front-runner who happens to be a woman.

But check out Ezra Klein, in his post at the American Prospect, as he attempts to put up a smokescreen around the gender card issue:

Do you guys think Clinton is making this about gender, and I'm giving her comments too sympathetic a read? Or has the press been aching to make this a race again, and so are now in a feeding frenzy mode, and are making everything from complicated answers about immigration to straight descriptions of gender realities a huge issue?

Nice try. Clinton bombed the debate. The piling on meme represents a classic Clintonian attempt at political damage control.

For more commentary, see Memeorandum.