Chris Matthews: Toolbox

I just made the fun mistake of watching Chris Matthews' Sunday morning show on NBC. He has some good guests- David Gregory and Andrew Sullivan. At the beginning, they discussed the war, of course. Matthews was talking about how President Bush... isn't talking up the war enough (!). Hey, Chris, why doesn't the President give a speech and tell us we need to stay the course! That'd help his approval ratings. As if the reason the country has turned against the war is that the President isn't talking it up enough.

He teased a blogger segment after the break. He said left-leaning bloggers don't go after Democrats, apparently (missed the beginning, a friend filled me in). That is a huge pile of bullshit. Bloggers go after lazy Democrats almost as much as they go after President Bush. It's the whole system that bothers them, not simply the buffoon running the show. Besides Bush posts, half the blog posts I read are about supporting new Democrats running in primaries against old Democrats (ie. a really well-spoken Democrat trying to take Lieberman's seat in Connecticut) or begging Democrats to get a spine (ie. a massive campaign this week to call Democrat senators to tell them to back Feingold's resolution).

The aspect Matthews spoke in detail on, though, was about liberal bloggers and the effect they can have on Democratic campaigns. He then noted how liberal bloggers want to stop Sen. Clinton from running for President... good. She will not win. Everyone knows that. The liberal bloggers want a Democrat to win the '08 election. We know Hillary can't. We know she's not sincere. So they just want the Democrats to nominate a more viable candidate. It's odd- the people in DC already decided long ago Hillary would be the candidate, and they don't seem to notice/care that the left and right both hate her.

Contrast this to the (as I said) 'Commander In Chief Cultists' who blog on the right and might as well be on Karl Rove's payroll. They do not criticize Bush (unless he wants to nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court or sell the ports to Dubai), they barely criticize Republicans, all they do is bitch about how "lih-buh-rals" are destroying America. Yet, no one points out what a cult world those blogs are, they just rant about left bloggers and their wacky ideas.... like, ohhh I don't know, the war in Iraq was a bad idea.

Finally, Matthews just made some comment implying bloggers are a bunch of losers who sit in pajamas and never see the light of day. Or something to that effect. He clearly doesn't read the bloggers. The guys who runs Daily Kos or AmericaBlog or Atrios (etc) are all well-educated people with great resumes. Some have PhDs, some are lawyers, some have had government jobs. Yes, there are some guys like me ranting in the PJs from home, but most of the big blogs are run by professionals with actual credentials to discuss the things they do.

In conclusion, Chris Matthews is a huge tool box.

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"I always thought Bush was more popular than his policies. I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this. Bush is not popular. I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy. Thirty-nine percent like him. Are you surprised? Does that fit with the world you walk in?"
(Chris Matthews, 3/15/06)

"Take a look at this very unpleasant bit of polling here. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, the one word descriptions of President Bush have turned incredibly negative with 48 percent -- I checked this twice, this, I couldn't believe it, but it's true -- 48 percent of the people responding to this poll used such words as 'incompetent,' 'idiot,' and 'liar' to describe our president. Kate O'Beirne, what happened to respect?"
(Chris Matthews, 3/16/06)

Chris, what happened to your brains?

Chris <3 Bush