Too late
I’ve never understood the point of Chris Matthews anyway: he seems to me to be just what you don’t want in a tv pundit – a loud unmodulated screamy voice saying stupid things without pausing for breath. Now people are saying he should go away because too ignorant for primetime.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is facing calls to resign after he compared Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucus to the Nazi invasion of France. Sanders won the Nevada Democratic caucuses with 47 percent of the vote, the Associated Press reported.
As the results came in and Sanders took an early lead on Saturday night, Hardball host Matthews claimed Republicans would release opposition research on Sanders that would “kill him” if he became the Democratic nominee for president. But Matthews said it was “too late” to stop him, at one point comparing Sanders’ victory over other top Democratic contenders to Hitler’s invasion of France.
“I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940 and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, ‘It’s over.’ And Churchill says, ‘How can that be? You’ve got the greatest army in Europe. How can it be over?’ He said, ‘It’s over.'”
People are reacting to the Nazi bit, but it looks to me as if Matthews was talking about the blitzkrieg bit. Nazi ideology is one thing and German military technique is another. The fall of France amazed everyone because it was so swift and unexpected. It’s still a ridiculous analogy though, but that’s the trouble with being a tv pundit whose chief skill is screaming.
I don’t want Sanders to win the nomination though. Over 80 and post-heart-attack? Bad idea. He shouldn’t be running at all.
We don’t seem to be able to do anything right.
Well, considering Matthews’s previous rants about Bernie (about how Bernie isn’t the sort to stop and help someone hurt by the roadside, and about how it’s reasonable to assume that Bernie wants to round people up for public executions because socialism), while the military comparison might be apt, the specific choice is also not innocent. Chuck Todd’s referring to Bernie supporters as brown shirts doesn’t help the optics any.
As for Sanders’s age and health …
I imagine that Bernie supporters would think that it would of course be great to have a younger candidate who checked all the same policy boxes. At this point, though, there is no such alternative with anything like Bernie’s name recognition or organizational strength. None of the other candidates in the top five is, from a policy perspective, even close to a substitute in the minds of those supporting Bernie’s platform. For example, the only other candidate with total support for universal health care is Tulsi, and she doesn’t have a realistic path to the nomination.
Bernie gets my vote simply for having policies that are closer to mine than anyone else I’ve seen in the pack. And when I say he has my vote, he doesn’t, because I am not a yank. But you know what I mean.
I’m not particularly thrilled about Bernie, but Matthews is more of an out-of-it, shouty, past-his-prime old man than Bernie on his worst day. Matthews is another guy pining for the good old days when Reagan and Tip O’Neill would supposedly work things out over a drink together — he even wrote a book about it.
Ugh. Chris Matthews. I wish he would go away too. And take Bernie with him.
Matthews reminiscing is almost as bad as his shouting. It’s humblebrag and I hate it.
Bernie is Corbyn. He has lots of “vision” but his rhetoric on the “revolution” is stupid and the idea that the people would rise up to support his M4A policy is pure fantasy. No thanks. Gimme someone who can get shit done.
Full disclosure – Elizabeth Warren is my candidate. I can’t vote for her in the primary because I don’t get to be a citizen in June. I’ll vote for whoever the Dem’s choose. But I’ll be less happy about voting for Sanders. And if it’s Bloomberg, it’ll be through gritted teeth.
If Sanders is the nominee, the VP choice will be more important than usual.
I’ve been a Bernie skeptic for a long time (though I voted for him back in ’92 when I was living in VT, and also in the 2016 primary*), but I’m beginning to think that the enthusiasm he generates among young voters and his surprisingly strong support among Latinos might be enough to win against Trump. (But on the other hand, the whole socialism thing won’t play well in Florida.)
*It was a last minute decision. I wasn’t terribly happy with either candidate, but by the time I voted it was pretty clear that Clinton was going to be the nominee, so it was a rather weak protest vote.
My sentiments exactly. I do like a lot of Bernie’s ideas, but I do not like him as a candidate. I think he is much like Trump, attracting voters who just want to break things, and he doesn’t seem to have well developed policies like Warren does. He rarely gives a thoughtful coherent answer to Biden’s regular attacks on the cost of his healthcare plan, though I could probably do so even without having studied the matter to the extent I would hope Bernie has studied it. And I hate his dismissive attitudes towards racism and sexism, assuming it will all just magically disappear if we fix the economic system.
That being said, if he gets the nomination, I might vote for him. (I might cast a protest vote for someone else, though, because I live in such a deep red state my presidential vote doesn’t count, anyway. My electoral college vote will go to Trump, Trump, and Trump again, if they can figure out how to get three votes for each of our electors).
Isn’t the candidate kind of irrelevant though? They’re going to be doing any governing by executive order, so all that really matters is booting Trump out on his arse.
@BKiSA But that’s the problem. Executive orders can only go so far. You can’t institute M4A or free college or any of these other things by EO.
Also, although this shouldn’t stop whoever becomes the Dem president, you can bet on Republicans screaming “tyranny!”.