So I’m in my car driving home and I have MSNBC on my Sirius and Chris Matthews is interviewing Hillary Clinton. Well, let’s just say that I knew that by the time I got home somebody would have this up. Of course it was Pierce.

This is not the way the Democratic Campaign Should be Conducted

Chris was just astounding:

I’m going to say this bluntly. The only person standing between a confirmed socialist who is calling for political revolution in this country winning the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, which has always been more moderate than that, is you. So, when you saw that rally last night, the young people all around Senator Sanders, when he yelled “revolution” out there, and they all applauded like mad, do you think that’s going to help in the general election or is it what we used to call in the Sixties an NDC candidacy—”November Doesn’t Count”—we just want to win the party, we don’t care about the general. You seem to be focused on the general. How do you beat a person who comes along in the primaries who says, ‘I’m going to give you everything you want: free tuition, more Social Security benefits, no increase in your taxes, free health-care from birth, all of it government-paid.’ How do you compete with a revolution? A revolution of promises, really.

Well, he said he was going to say this bluntly. I have very little respect for Chris Matthews, but he just practically begged Hillary to beat the revolutionary to death with  a hammer, foregoing all pretense of impartiality. Hillary, not sensing that she was talking to a man untethered from journalistic ethics, took the bait.

I do think we have an obligation to keep people focused on what’s at stake. We can’t let the Republicans rip away the progress we have made. We can’t let them go back to trickle-down economics, repeal the Affordable Care Act. We can’t let them stack the Supreme Court for another generation. We’ve got to get back to the middle. We’ve got to get back to the big center and solving problems. That’s how we make progress in America. I’m proud to be in a line of Democratic presidents who just got in there and fought it out…I know how hard it is, and I totally appreciate how exciting it can be to be involved in a campaign that really just puts out these great big ideas. But I want folks to just stop and think, no matter what age you are, OK, we agree on getting the economy going. We agree on raising income. We agree on combatting climate change. We agree on universal health-care. Who has the track record? Who’s got things done? Who can actually produce the results you want for you and your family, and for our country?

If the old fathead had meant to set her up he couldn’t have done a better job of inducing her to show her true self.

We’ve got to get back to the middle. We’ve got to get back to the big center and solving problems. That’s how we make progress in America.

Wrong! Wrong! Fucking wrong! Aw hell no wrong!!!  That was what was wrong with Bill’s presidency and the late unlamented Democratic Leadership Conference, the beltway third way compromisers, the Joe Lieberman’s, Max Baucuses and Joe Manchins that are constantly shitting on the left side of the party so that exactly nothing real ever gets done.

Matthews was not done yet. He went on about some ahistorical nonsense like the progressives were pragmatic Democrats when they were actually Republicans like Roosevelt and Taft.  Or that the New Deal was centrist.  As Pierce points out, the New Deal was so not centrist that some Republicans planned a coup against Roosevelt.

Look, the history of the Democratic party—your party, not Bernie Sanders. He’s not a Democrat—your party has produced the New Deal, the progressive income tax came from the Democrats, Social Security, the greatest anti-poverty program, came from Roosevelt, health-care and civil rights, and all these good things, and in every case, you had to battle Republicans against it to the last person. It’s always been a tough fight. You need 60 votes in the Senate, and you need 218 in the House. And if you don’t have them nothing gets done. Can the Bernie people be taught—not him, he can’t be taught—can the kids behind him be told that this is how it works in our system? You can call for a revolution but it ain’t gonna happen. There isn’t going to be a revolution. There’s gonna be an election and an inauguration and then there’s going to be a Congress sitting next to you that you have to deal with. Revolution sounds like a pass. You don’t have to have logic any more. We’re going to have a revolution and pay for anything.

I think there was more to the interview but I’d already checked out. Read Pierce. Watch the interview f you can stand it. Pull over first, I warn you.

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/clinton-on-her-chances-in-new-hampshire-614386755972