Brokaw sets Matthews, pundits straight

January 9, 2008

I’m willing to cut professional pollsters quite a bit of slack. Professional pundits? Not so much.

BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don’t stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they’re saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this. But we don’t have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede, in effect, the process.

Look, I’m not just picking on us, it’s part of the culture in which we live these days. I think that the people out there are going to begin to make judgments about us if we don’t begin to temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding….

Thank you, Mr. Brokaw. Everyone needed to hear this, though Chris Matthews needed to hear it more than most.

D-Day added an important observation raised on the air by the always-fantastic Rachel Maddow:

Rachel Maddow just relayed to Chris Matthews’ face that many in the blogosphere (she cited Talking Points Memo specifically) are blaming HIM and his misogyny as the reason undecideds broke late for Clinton. Matthews laughed it off, but there was some real bitterness there.

This is glorious. If the media can understand that their catty, elitist, high school Heathers-like mentality will ultimately backfire, maybe they’ll shut their mouths for a second and rethink their job description.

That would be nice.

Now, it seems unlikely that mindless, misogynistic media coverage, particularly of incidents like The Tears, would necessarily drive voters into a candidate’s camp. How many people are seriously going to say to themselves, “I was going to back (someone else), but now I’m going to vote for Clinton in the hopes that it’ll annoy Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, and their cohorts”?

Probably not many — but maybe more than a few. TPM got an email this morning that resembles many that I’ve received as well.

Based on what I was feeling, there were two turning points for Clinton in the past week. One was a report that people were chanting “Iron my shirt” at her during a rally. The other was John Edwards’ idiotic statements about Clinton tearing up at an event. Mix that in with the subtle media digs at Clinton’s gender in recent months (descriptions of what she’s wearing, how she “emasculates” men, etc.), and I think you had a tremendous push back from women, and men, who are tired of the misogyny underlying this campaign. It swayed me toward Clinton the past few days, even as I cheered for an Obama coronation.

Yet another angle to consider.

Tweety’s response to Rachel – “What website is this?”

(As in “I’ve never heard of Josh Marshall or the blog, who is this that dare speak of the great Chris Mathews?”)

  • Somebody cared about “Iron my shirt”? Amazing.

    Chris is rather full of himself. But I do like listening to both his shows. I just carry a large salt shaker around with me when I do.

    Still, the punditry was hardly worse then the blogging/commenting here over the last week.

    Didn’t someone we all know and respect say that fourth place in Iowa meant you were out of the nomination race?????

  • “other was John Edwards’ idiotic statements about Clinton tearing up at an event.”

    I agree, in addition to that, the media framing it as “double-teaming Hillary”. It’s like Edwards almost wanted Obama to lose…

  • So far there’s just anecdotal evidence to these theories of last night in Hew Hampshire being a push-back of Hillary’s treatment. I’d like to see and hear more evidence. But it would be nice if the media would realize that their meddling and manipulation of the news as if they are somehow the puppet masters were to backfire on them. All their hissy fits and bitching like this was high school outside of our lockers is as some argue entertaining, it’s also destructive to the democratic process. Politics is enough of a soap opera without the media making sh*t up to stir the pot even more.

  • In case anyone missed this interview with Edwards, where he asserts that he was not criticizing Hillary – it really didn’t get any coverage.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z91mi0-rCWk

    Now, that he was then asked if he had ever teared up on the campaign trail, and answered “no” and looked sort of puzzled at the question – maybe that’s a back-handed way of getting at Clinton?

    Anyway, for whatever it’s worth.

  • From Horse’s Mouth, here is what Tweety said this morning. And he still has a job:

    Last night, Matthews said: “I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again.”

    But by this morning Matthews had already forgotten his newfound respect for her. He said: “The reason she’s a U.S. Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win it on the merits…”
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/

  • Matthews often strikes me as a bull in a china shop.

    Although I’m not an expert on the mental abilities of bulls, I suspect a bull in a china shop has absolutely no concept of the value of china, feels no obligation to avoid knocking over whole shelves of china, and does not feel guilty after does smash china. He just does what comes naturally, and doesn’t think about the consequences of what he does.

  • Personally, I can’t get over the complete unabashed blithering stupidity of the question and answer here: MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess…(uh duh!)

    With scandals busting out all over and a president out shopping for just one more war for his administration, what on Earth could we talk about other than to blather on in slow motion for ten more months?

  • Jeez, I wish everyone would lay off Edwards. Clinton’s almost-tears weren’t some sort of cataclysmic event and didn’t slow her down in expressing Edwards unreadiness to be President. It’s sort of like trying to help and injured dog, you’re likely to be bit in the process.

  • I can’t say whether Matthews really turned things for Clinton, but he was emblematic of a punditry that seemed over-joyed at the prospect of her demise. The last week has swung me from undecided to Obama, but I’m glad Hillary won last night. First off, the eventual nominee, especially if it’s Obama, needs to be tested and the primary season is a good way to do it. If he can’t come back from this, he shouldn’t be president. Second, for all my misgivings of a Clinton presidency, she didn’t deserve to go down the way it was looking. Say what you will about her, but she’s lived what I consider to be an honorable life, on the whole, and deserved more respect than she was being shown. She’s not a monster and I was thrilled when Maddow shoved it up Matthew’s ass. He’s the biggest douchebag on TV with a pitiful case of CDS. Today, the only explanation he had for the result was the Bradley effect, which then led him to argue that Colin Powell should be the GOP nominee. Does he even think before the words come out?

  • I’m pretty sure they don’t pay Matthews to think – if they do, they’re not getting much bang for their considerable bucks. But, really, Matthews has been ragging on Clinton forever, and I think the only one more excited about her running for president was him, just contemplating all the opportunities he would have to talk about her. There’s something really smarmy about the things he chooses to discuss about her, to the point where I think she should present him with a pair of her panties – for all we know he would have a massive heart attack and that would be that.

    Listen, I have no problem with someone questioning a candidate’s record, or positions on the issues, or discussing strategy, or the election process. It shouldn’t be necessary to discuss – as all of these nitwits did – the candidates’ physical attributes – hair and fingers and height and laugh and shoulders and even – God help us – what they smell like. Maybe Matthews would have more affinity for an actual beauty pageant – I’m sure Donald Trump would be happy to have him on a Miss USA panel – and the political world would be better for it, don’t you think? Or maybe we could get him on the red carpet at the Oscars with Joan Rivers – together they could out-catty each other to orgasm. Ugh – now I need brain bleach.

    What disturbs me so about Matthews is how he revels in his mean-spiritedness – never let it be said again that men do not gossip. And he’s not alone, which is even sadder.

    Best thing I can suggest is not to watch him. Ever.

  • Matthews is a mouth with no brain. Truly, a biological wonder. Pray it’s not an evolutionary advantage.

  • MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

    What a ‘tard. He can stay home, the rest of the media can take a break from the primary trail and get back to updating us on the status of Anna Nicole Smith’s decomposition.

  • Outside of Brokaw having some integrity and Matthews being an idiot. I didn’t find much value in this article. Pro Hillary rhetoric, yada, yada, yada.

  • JZ @ 14: Does he even think before the words come out?

    Surely you jest. The man was born without a filter – hence the embarrassingly sexual comments he’s wont to make about the likes of manly men GW Bush, Giuliani, and Fred Thompson.

    Agree pretty much 100% with what you said. I’m far, far, far from a Clinton fan, but Obama needs honing before the general, if he does get it. And I hope he does. I heard an interview on Morning Edition today that showed his class and grace.

    What I wouldn’t do for a president with those two qualities! I thought the way both Clintons lashed out with anger and cashed in the fear card after Iowa showed that neither has either.

  • Matthews can’t even imagine that there might be something to do besides endless handicapping and re-handicapping the horse race, bouncing biased perspectives back-and-forth with his talking head chums. Without that, he’d have nothing to do! He’d have to stay home.

    Actual coverage of issues? Fact checking candidate statements? Reviews of policy proposals? Discussion of actual ideas, not just gossip about haircuts or tears? Nope.The idea that he could be doing that is just not in his head! (What the hell is Brokaw babbling about??)

    His comment this morning that Hillary Clinton didn’t win her office on the merits was really over the top. You could hear the other people on the air with him at the time sputtering, shocked that he’d revealed his basic bias so clearly.

    What an astonishingly awful man.

  • I am thinking that Chris Matthews has made a fool of himself. It seems as though his hatred of the Clintons stems out of extreme jealousy and makes him appear insane and obsessed when engages in any kind of a discussion with regards to either one of them. One only has to remember him waxing on an on about the virtues of George Bush to realize one should never pay attention to anything that he has to say.

  • What all this really exposes is simply that elections have less and less to do with the future of our nation and of the world, and more to do with creating an over-sold, over-analyzed, over-emotionalized, double-stuf hyperbolic Super Bowl of Politics. Hair and tears and cleavage and polls and surges and fund-raising and off-hand comments and slogans and bumpersticker designs and etc. so vastly overshadow ANY real issues. As Al Gore says in “The Assault on Reason”, elections are about money, posturing and moving that name-recognition needle ever so slightly. The MSM will continue to eat itself, covering things, complaining about the coverage of things, complaining about complainers, but it will never be satisfied. Not by a long shot.

  • Total agreement with everyone shocked that Brokaw is a voice of reason.

    The situation has to be extremely clear for him to recognize it.

  • You know what we need? An “American Idol” show for aspiring pundits.

    In such a forum, when contestants say retarded things, they will be identified as idiots and booed off the stage.

    Unfortunately, the judges on such a show would likely be idiots themselves. They would tend to favor contestants who, by joining the ranks of punditry, make idiots less likely to stand out.

  • Anne,

    …to the point where I think she should present him with a pair of her panties…

    Only *after* she wins the general election. Otherwise, that’s all we’ll hear about between now and November.

  • I have a question for all you folks out there. I am a male who is following this all with keen interest. And I’ve read through a lot of the analysis, noting that in the case of the NH primary, Hillary carried female voters by a wide margin.
    My question is this: Is it sexist for a male to wonder if for some of the female voters that voted for Clinton, her gender was a significant consideration in their choice?
    Personally, my preferences are: 1) Obama, 2) Edwards with Clinton a close 3rd to Edwards. But my preferences have nothing to do with the gender of the candidates, and everything to do with my perceptions of the candidates’ political world-views and other general talents/characteristics.
    I’d love to hear comments on the question of sexism.

  • In response to Wary Tale’s question about whether it is sexist to wonder if some female voters chose Clinton in part because of her gender:
    As a (male) feminist, I would not say it is sexist to wonder about that. But I do think it is naive to think that somehow all the millions of votes for male candidates in the past and in the present are genderless simply because gender selection occurs before the choice is available. The system has consistently thrown up male presidents only. I think it is perfectly reasonable for a woman or male voter to decide the election of a female president per se would have a positive impact on gender equality all over the world, and to take that into account when judging between various attractive candidates. Likewise an African American president.

  • Chris Matthews is a big disappointment. I don’t think that I’ll be able to watch his T.V. programs with same interest nor fascination. It is all very depressing, “I guess”.

  • She got him the other night when she said something to the effect of ‘How do I get ride of all you obsessed boys.’ He was so clueless I don’t think he knew what the hell she was talking about. Then what the hell is he doing rubbing her check, it was a Bush in Germany moment, I felt dirty.

    Back to the topic. I think Hillary is getting people who are saying ‘Do I dislike her because she is un-electable or is that my cover because I am misogynistic attitudes’ or maybe that is just me. Stupid Tweety is putting doubts in my head and I can not be the only one and if there are enough of us thinking along those lines, it can only help her.

    My point is that people like Tweety are having people second thinking there views. How many women are voting for her, and how many men are voting against her because she is a women rather then because she is a good/bad candidate.

  • I’d love to hear comments on the question of sexism. — WaryTale

    This is where I step into deep doo-doo, but what the heck. I don’t think it’s sexist for a male to ask whether some number of females support a female candidate on the basis of gender. I can think of legitimate reasons why some might (including the messes certain men have made while president). But it begs the question, in so doing, would those females be acting in a sexist manner?

    Personally, I don’t care. But it opens the door a crack for a funny story. My daughter used to play baseball on a co-ed team. When her team beat an all-boys team, I overheard a father from the other team ask, “what do you tell your son after he loses to a bunch of girls?” Before realizing how big he was, I blurted out, “you tell him to practice or get used to it.”

  • WaryTale asks: “Is it sexist for a male to wonder if for some of the female voters that voted for Clinton, her gender was a significant consideration in their choice?”

    Only if you think it’s an invalid rationale for their votes. There has been a lot of ones and zeros sent accross the internet about “there is no religious test for office” when Huckabee called himself a “Christian Leader”. But the fact is he’s not suggesting there be a test for him to run, he’s proposing to Christians (especially evangelicals) that they might vote for him based on that claim. People can vote for the reasons they want.

    If the women of New Hampshire voted for Hillary because they believed that Edwards, the pundits (Chris, we’re talking about you) and the media beat up on her in an unseemly manner, then that’s their reason. There’s nothing wrong about that, especially in a world where votes like this can change more than which party controls the White House. Women need to be able to run for high office in this Country, and New Hampshire was a strike against an underlying handicap they’ve had to face.

  • I am a firm beleiver that an “average” person votes comfort, that is what they are is what they are comfortable with. What are people comfortable with: their religion, race, gender, age, geography.

    If you put all the candidates on a list and compare NH demographics with the candidates, there is no question that Clinton would be the most comfortable. NH is 96% white, 42% over 50 (25% under 18) 52% female, and Clinton has been northern NY Senator for 8 years (geography). The fact of the matter is the magic of Obama ~ that he is crossing all of these lines and made NH a heat (even though he was favored). Since independents broke for McCain, Obama fell short.

    Iowa has similar demographics to NH, but there was no draw for Independents to vote for someone on GOP side…..the vaccuum went to Obama. The true test after Clinton wins an uncontested MI and Obama wins SC will be Florida, Florida, Florida ~ followed by ST February 5th when all demographics are in play for the largest number of delegates. My prediction is a slim Hillary edge ~ methinks all due to comfort.

  • Re #34,

    Why wasn’t New Hampshire more comfortable with Romney (next door Mass.) than McCain (Southwestern U.S.)?

  • Re: 35

    That is one factor in my short list. The other factors bend toward McCain I beleive.

    In addition to the fact that McCain more of a known quantity. If I know someone better (and their religion is not more of a mystery either) I am more comfortable with that person.

    This is not a novel theory….but I think moreso when candidates politics are similar, like in a primary, then the comfort / likability factors play a larger role.

  • Does anyone remember reading a book by a member of the Bill Clinton presidency in which he stated that Chris Matthews had wanted to be their press secretary? Perhaps he can’t handle rejection. It was a long book, Erskine Bowles, perhaps was the author.

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