Chris Matthews and Panel Still Touting the "Obama Moved Too Far to the Left" Meme
After years of conservatives making sure that the government can’t work for average citizens and destroying it on purpose and the Democrats who actually do for the most part still care about governing but have decided to chase after the corporate teat and be Republican light to keep getting re-elected, Chris Matthews and his panel seem completely oblivious to the reasons that anyone who’s paying an ounce of attention to how they’re acting might just be more than a little pissed off at what’s going on in Washington right now.
The subjects for his panel for the day are “Will Obama Recalibrate His Agenda In Response To Voter Outrage?” and “White Flight: Why Have Working Class Whites Abandoned Obama?” Here are some of the highlights of their responses.
Matthews asks if Obama should have restored “faith in positive government” before trying to reform health care. David Brooks responds.
Brooks: Yeah, what’s the biggest issue of our lifetime? It’s that people used to trust government in the New Deal and the Great Society. Now like 17% of Americans trust government. And this distrust of government has been building and building and building. And Massachusetts is a phenomenon of that. And so the question before the Democrats is do we listen to the people and say hey, we’re scaling back, or do we say we really believe in our agenda, we don’t care what you say. We believe in it so much we’re going forward. And that’s the crucial decision they have.
Matthews: And it seems like it’s… they don’t trust government to do things for you. It’s not just get the roads plowed or something; it’s this kind of social program.
Brooks: Obama trusts government. I really think that’s what the election of Obama was about. They want to have a government that can do the basics for them. They don’t want it to take over their lives, but do the basics, provide some security and the disillusion now comes from those lost hopes.
Matthews: Do you think Clarence now that the administration, these smart guys around the President, he especially, misread his mandate and said they didn’t like Bush, they didn’t like Cheney, so they’re going to like a real liberal, even leftist kind of government? Did they misread it?
The supposed liberal on the panel, Clarence Page doesn’t bother to point out that Obama is not a “leftist”. Thanks Clarence. Then Kathleen Parker decides to impart some of her wisdom on us.
Parker: Well first of all, Barack Obama had one mandate, and that was to not be George W. Bush and he should have known from the Clintons that any time you tack left, you go in the hole. You know he was elected by all of these former Republicans and independents because they thought he was going to be a centrist leader and he projected that on the campaign. So you know, he’s got to come back center.
The conversation moves on to more foolishness like pretending that Obama has not already done enough to court Republicans and the likes of Olympia Snowe. Just what planet are these people living on? Matthews and his panel seem to think that no one in the country has paid an ounce of attention to how Obama has governed or how the Republicans have responded and obstructed.
He's not losing support because he tacked to the left. He's losing suppport because he tacked to the right and looks like he cares more about the banks and Wall Street than the working class. He's losing support because he's gone back on campaign promises. He's losing support because he's saying one thing in public and doing the opposite behind closed doors. He's losing support because he's got to work with a bunch of ConservaDems and he's looking like it doesn't bother him a bit. And if President Obama doesn't start doing something to get people back to work he's going to lose more support. Sadly the Republicans, the ConservaDems and the Villagers who live in opposite land like this bunch will be happy to help him along.
You have a whole pack of corporate paid liars spreading more lies!
I say fuck these corporate whores and the horse they road in on.
I will not waste my time listening to these slugs.
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness and it is killing America!
It has been a well planned plot to destroy the progressives or left what ever in the hell the news media , republicans and the centrists democrat wish to call their base..
They have systematically been destroying the name of the liberal , left , progressives for many years now and the democrats like Emanuel , Obama and the centrists are on the band wagon..
Chris Matthews has never like the progressives , liberals or left if you remember when Bush was president he called the left wackoos for they attacks of the Bush actions and policies which created the very destruction our country is seeing now...
Tell me the actions or policies that Emanuel , Obama and the democrats have been pushing which are from the left.. This BS of Matthews is just that BS... And to think that Steward attack Rachel and Olbermann on MSN.. Leaving Joe and Matthews along...
Emanuel , Obama and the centrists are trying to kick everyone of the progressives or liberals out of office...If you can not see this than you have your head in the sand to long
The progressive , liberals are to well informed and know what in the hell is going on with the governments actions and policies. So every since the liberal organizations as moveon.org was started over 10 years ago they consider them to dangerous to exit or people to listen to them..
Remember that not only did the republicans introduce legislation to censor moveon.org the democrats jumped on the band wagon to vote for it..
Just where are the liberal policies in which Emanuel has let Obama pass. Just about every policy Obama promised in his campaign which the Independents also voted for , he has left behind..
There has been no repel of the Bush tax cuts to the top 1 percent.
The soldiers and CONTRACTORS are plentiful in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
There health bill is a joke and nothing but a piece of crap created by the health/drug lobbies and the republicans..
Wall street is enjoying our tax money with their bonuses and salaries while at the same time giving the bailout money to the banks overseas.
None of the money has help the people in this country and the Banks have become very arrogant and deceitful with what they do with OUR money...
None
because he's a right wing corporatist who's kissing the frigging America hating GOPs ass and won't prosecute mass murdering war criminals. In other words he's just like Matthews, who working class whites abandoned long ago.
"In other words he's just like Matthews, who working class whites abandoned long ago."
I never watch Tweety, so I don't feel competent to address that point. But about Obama being a corporatist: Everyone with a functioning brain knows that "supply-side" economics is just a bunch of worthless crap. When FDR took office in 1933, he went to the core and worked to come up with programs to help the PEOPLE. He was a Populist. What did Obama do? Engineer a bailout for Wall Street and the big banks. He did not try to help the people, only the corporations. Thus he is a corporatist. I must admit, though, that "supply-side" and "trickle-down" DOES work in one way. All of that money from Washington manages to trickle down into the pockets of the fat cats.
and America is not left enough to be great......
Bummer.
That Beltway bubble must keep all logic and common sense out.
Is like a bimbo without all the good looks. If he wasn't such a useful tool, he wouldn't have a job. He's like a dumber Sullivan, in the "occasionally stopped clock right, but don't trust his opinions on the whole" vein.
is the site now blocking those with ad blockers in firefox?
cuz i was blocked until i disabled the add on
[No, I don't think it's that, Walt. Something just went a little haywire and screwed with everyone. Site Monitor]
other sites are doing that...that is why i asked
good, i can reenable it now
thx
if a real independent appears for 2012. Neither party should feel very good right now. It's not about left or right, it's about a bunch of polarized idiots who can't pull their heads out of their asses and do the right thing for the people. To most of you on Capitol Hill, serve the people or leave, leave now.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
they will run as teabaggers and populists
get back into power and sell off everything that is left, that wasnt stolen over the past 10 years
that is what brown did...it worked
If they do that then they will find themselves without a leg to stand on in the end. Seriously it will end the party when America finally wakes up to the reality of what they have done. Sadly it seems that it will take just that to happen before America does wake up.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
"Washington is in for an ugly lesson if a real independent appears for 2012."
But who would that be? The only guy I can think of is Bernie Sanders, and I don't think that he has presidential ambitions.
I wish that independents got a bigger share of the spotlight, because there have to be some good decent independents out there who would be great in the White House.
Oh dear sweet dead armadillo jeebus! If Obama went just a bit more to the left he might actually be where 60-70% of the American people have been for the past 30 years.
And then there are the people who say the "the media is liberal!" If you have enough money and connections I guess you can create your own "political reality"
im a commie bastiche
this is insane talk
These clowns wouldn't know a Liberal if one bit them in their arses. They constantly throw this term around like it was a social disease.....and Matthews claims he is a student of history....the "best of the best" to hear him talk.....Gah....they are the ones with no sense of history......they are deliberately shilling this meme that the democrats are finished and the repubs are making a comeback. How flipping stupid can they possibly get?
Had the repubs not gotten rid of all functions of the regulatory agencies and gutted regulations back to nothing this country would not be in the position it is in today.
These clowns are overpaid stoops....and the irony is, that they hate one another and are so jealous of each other and their turf.
Grow up you clowns.
These idiots are so cluelessly fucking stupid, they don't even realize the last time a democrat made his party less popular than repukes - happened in the 1990's when idiots like Rahm and Larry were ignoring the democratic base, and governing GOP-lite!
These fascist plutocrats need to be first in line at the guilotine when the great revolt comes!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Chris Matthews and his inside the beltway panel don't know crap. Maybe if they would step outside of their cubicles maybe they would learn what the hell is going on in America, not just in Washington.
Now, the reason Obama is losing support and it's mostly his base, is not because he has gone too far left, but rather he has gone to far right and is falling into the Washington mold of not doing anything. That's why he is losing support. If he would come out with tough regulations for Wall Street and the Banks support would start coming back. If he started to have some balls and take on the Republicans, some more support would come back. And if he passed Health Care Reform and not this piece of crap of the Senate bill, but real reform by taking on the Insurance Industry all his support would be back.
Holy shit, bob876, you're right on the mark!
I voted for Obama thinking there was going to be change. Instead, we get more of the same crap because he's listening to the same class of Beltway idiots that kept Bush in power. He's not listening to the progressives who got him elected, the grass roots who are screaming for relief from the fucking Wall Street capitalists, the bankers, the insurance lobby and the warmongering military-industrial cabal.
Democratic Party progressive, Vietnam veteran and proud Union member for 41 years
bob876 and Mike, you guys are so on the mark!The entire problem is that Obama ran on a platform, hell, on a slogan, of Change We Can Believe In. The operative word in that slogan is CHANGE. That's why we voted for him - CHANGE. I'm not going to say that Obama hasn't done anything, but, damnit, I expected him to fight more. There wasn't anything after election day that was unexpected - the economy was in the shitter before, we were in two wars before, unemployment was on the way up before - why hasn't he FOUGHT for anything? I expected that a son of the Senate would have much more sway over how the houses of congress would operate. He KNEW how things got done. Why hasn't he put his foot down and just tell these pantywaists what he wants, and, that he wants it done. Quickly. Yeah, I know, bipartisanship (blah, blah,blah). He was elected by a very strong progressive base with a large amount of independents who were just tired of W and his Merry Band. He wasn't elected by a huge bipartisan coalition. I would venture to guess that very few Republicans voted for him. So, why, oh why, did he make bipartisanship such a huge part of his governing policy? That decision, I think, is his biggest mistake. Going to the center, or whatever you want to call it. He was elected by people who were sick and tired of the same old same old. And now, he is just giving us the same old same old. C'mon, Barack, grow a pair. You're the frickin' President of the United States of America. You are the most powerful man in the world. Act like it!
Obama protecting Bush/Cheney and the republicans...
Obama is breaking the oath he took for office when he censors the information about the crimes of the previous administration and blocks all prosecutions.
Obama has bent so far over backwards for Bush/Cheney and the right wing republicans that he is falling on his a.. and now blaming the liberals for it. There has to be a reason for Obama to protect the previous administration the way he has/is..
Just who is really running our government.. Has this Mercenary military industrial complex really run our country..
They certainly are woven through our entire government... Military , intelligent agency , FBI , CIA and other government offices..
We see how they are now help responsible for any of their criminal actions and the numbers and control is growing everyday...
None
If Obama were real serious about Banking reform, people would be going to jail and there would be endless congressional hearings. This needs to happen because so many people were screwed by the big banks and are still getting screwed.....the problem is there too much lobbying money pouring in and it is all about winning.
The GOP is up to its neck in dough from both health care and the banksters. They are giving it to individual members and not the fundraising arms of their party. In other words, they screwed the american people and now they are trying to come back and screw those they couldn't catch in the first round.
They are lying and they know it. It's what they are paid to do. Convince the sheeple that Obama is a leftist.
Truly criminal behavior.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
Sounds like a circus act.
The truth is a beautiful thing and thanks to this top notch blog the American public can learn it before it's too late.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity. Albert Einstein
does not pay any attention to the "netroots" that Tweety accuses Grayson of pandering to.
What percentage of US citizens own computers and how many of them blog on progressive sites?
Of course the clown lie - and there are millions of sheeple who are out there that believe the
lie because it is repeated over and over again.
Turn off the TV
Take to the streets
Join a movement before it is too late!
From the land of 10,000 lakes
Watching Matthews is a complete waste of time. He is both an idiot and a freak (with some fairly serious problems).
It seems to me like Matthews is nothing more than a source of displeasure and unhappiness. Nobody is going to learn anything important watching him and his guests are just the same old people who can be seen lots of other places.
I would never waste my time watching an entire show of his and for some time now I have been avoiding almost all of the clips that the Internet offers. On the rare instances when I do watch a Tweety clip, it is to see/hear what someone else said, since I know Matthews himself has nothing but noise to offer.
That sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure that anyone knows any of this for sure. The American voter is a mess -- uninformed, misinformed, ignorant, biased, fickle, immature, selfish, etc. The list goes on and on. The post-Massachusetts summaries of what went wrong were nothing more than people taking their own opinions and biases and guessing about the voters of Massachusetts had done and why. For example, lots of people said the vote was a referendum on health care reform. However, Massachusetts had already had its own reform and it's hard to believe the state's voters view national health care reform the same way residents of other states do. It's similar to the opinions of people who already have secure, affordable health care coverage. Is it really reasonable to expect them to view reform in the same way that the uninsured/uninsurable do? It would be nice if the insured would exercise a little empathy, but that doesn't strike me as the strong suit of a great many Americans today.
is a failure.
Here is Trudy Lieberman's analysis of the Scott Brown election. She is a journalist with the Columbia Journalism Review:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/01...
The problem, at least in Massachusetts, is that Obama hasn't moved FAR enough to the left.
People can see that corporations have insidiously taken over practically every aspect of our lives.
This healthcare reform legislation, as it stands now, will be the final corporate nail in our coffin.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
If you consider the question, why this meme that Obama has gone too far to the left, the answer should be obvious. Their job is to create the memes for your intellectual consumpsion, recreating reality for their viewers by providing not only the meme, but more importantly, a concensus among the talking heads as to the veracity of this meme.
So, as is obvious to every serious commentor on this thread, this is a false meme, yet no one on the panel said so. No one said that Obama had lost support for his health care reform because there was no public option, muchless a single payer system, which polls show would have the support of a majority of Americans. No one said that he could have lost support by not delivering on his promises to get out of Iraq, restore civil rights and privacy rights, brought forward the investment necessary for the major infrastructure development, upgrade, and maintainance. It could be that Obama signaled left and then turned right, and that's why his people are angry. They feel betrayed.
This is not what he had promised in his campaign to his supporters.
They expected him to be on their side.
Jack, I get so tired of this meme that Obama hasn't gotten our troops out of Iraq.What could he do when Bush already signed an agreement to get the troops out by 2011 and that is on a time line and progressing. You can't just pool troops out on a dime. Get real. I am a supporter of President Obama and what I see is someone trying to get this country back on it's feet without the help of the other party and some of his own. What did you all expect just 12 months in office and what he had to deal with. He is trying to govern for all the people and thats including the corporations and the people they hire. We may not like them, but most of them do hire people. If all the liberals and progressives and dems do not vote then we get what we do not vote for. We didn't get in this mess overnight it's taken 30 years. Do you remember what Ronnie Regun said? "I'm the government and I'm here to help" and that was the start of dismantling and bankrupting this country. So if all that is done is bitching and not going to the poles then we do get what we don't vote for.
.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
my list of beliefs of the americans mentality.
try to find this list on any of the mass media.
Believes it is moral to make mega profits off the sick and needy:
Believes it is moral to deny coverage to its citizens for pre existing conditions:
Has 30 to 50 million people without health care insurance:
Has wars for profits for the few creating suffering around the world:
Calls their soldiers heroes for fighting in their wars for profits:
Builds monuments to those soldiers after they had killed one million Vietnamese in an illegal ideological war for profits: then there is Iraq and afghan.
Has a military expense larger than all of the other 23 industrialized countries combined:
Has states where families take pride in raising their children to fight in these illegal and immoral wars for profits:
Has 720 military bases around the world:
Believes that capitalism and patriotism are synonyms:
Corporate and military control of congress, white house, and now the supreme court and the election process:
A government that panders to Wall Street, banks, and corporations for money:
A nation that the prisons are over flowing with crime and drug problems:
One out of eight children on food stamps:
Hundreds of thousands going bankrupt over medical costs unheard of in other industrialized countries:
Corporations control most of the mass media:
A self acclaimed Christian nation that worships at the altar of capitalism an economic and political ideology of survival of the fittest mentality that goes against everything their savior taught:
A nation that has open borders with a third world country not out of compassion but corporate and small business desire for cheap labor, long hours with no benefits:
A nation that gives tax breaks to corporations and the rich while many of their citizens lack medical care and live in poverty and die in their wars for profits:
A nation that one per cent of the population has more wealth than the bottom 95%:
A nation of tea baggers so dumbed down they are protesting for the very people that funds their efforts but robs them of their personal freedoms and any remaining wealth:
An educational system based on survival of the fittest competition now in shambles:
A university system beholden to the industrial military complex for grants:
A religious university that builds a library in honor of a sociopath and war monger former president that invaded a third world country for their 40 years of oil reserves:
What is the future of such a nation? Self-destruction due to its own immorality?
Just be vigilant and hope you time it right to get out. My wife thinks I'm loony but leaving seems to be the only way. I only hope I save enough before it's too late.
this country has become researcher.
I was out to dinner last night with a group of Obama apologists and we really got into a BIG discussion about "how he's done" in this past year in office.
After all the to and fro I said, "Obama isn't stupid. He knows the difference between right and wrong. I want to see him do what is right for the American people for once, not what is in the best interest of his corporate paymasters. Because that is quite obviously who he has been serving."
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
Greatness was in the other direction....
and it cannot be self proclaimed from the the top of Whitney or Denali....
it must be said and thought of you....by others.
any of the Sunday shows anymore. Or the cable news.
Chris Matthews interview with Bill Steigerwald, Pittsburgh Tribune Review 11/30/02
“How do you define your politics or did you just do that?”
“If you run thru a pecking order of issues, I’d probably be liberal in terms of pro-abortion rights and pro-gay rights.”
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Chris Matthews interview with Mary Ann French, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (no date)
Matthews:
“(Conservatives) will understand I disagree with them on about 5-6 issues they care about, such as abortion rights.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
He is famous enough... what do you think shaped his views?
Study the symptoms not the virus...
Distrust of the govt has been pushed down our throats since the Reagan years. Then, when Rethuglicans are in charge, they design it to fail, which is exactly what happened under Bush. Then they say, see it doesn't work. The MSM is cluesless and worthless. Someone please explain precisely what Obama has done that's been so far to the left.
As of last week's Supreme Court decision, there is no "left". Everyone inside the D.C. beltway will be asking the corporations for permission and guidance in everything they do. Case closed, as it were.
So we can get a real liberal to run.
Republicans are liars and simply cannot be trusted.
Looks like an American version of the Pravda's editorial board during the Soviet years. A lot of minor disagreements but mostly head nodding and back scratching.
All viewers have to listen for is how many times Matthews claims to have ALWAYS been against the war in Iraq (remember when "W" landed on that carrier and his rant against Dean?) or when he claims to have been against other Republican economic items, after the economy collapsed.
Pure BS.
These bastards know damned well Obama has been the second coming of Bill Clinton, who served them very well during his 8 years. Now they are trying to pre-empt Obama's move to the actual left by trying to frame the debate on what Obama should do. That's why there is such an effort over all the media landscape to paint him as a liberal, and thus that has failed, so he needs to move to the right. If by liberal they mean listening to Lieberman, Nelson, Baucus, and Conrad, well yeah then he has been liberal. They would be wrong. These coporate whores are anything but progressive or liberal. Here's the 64 million dollar question; will it work? Will Obama buy this bullshit coming from the villagers on the talk shows, or will he listen to the people who voted him into office. If he continues ignoring his base, he will become a real lame duck in November. At that point, the media will again kiss his brass ring because they will have won again.
Too far to the left? This is insanity.
I'm outraged because Obama didn't nationalize ailing banks or demand a health care public option above all else.
nobody watches this crap. They can't influence anybody if they don't watch. Those few who do watch are smart enough to know it's BS.
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