Kill (The) Bill
This Hardball segment is a prime example of why cable talk shows and cable news generally are such useless venues for discussing politics. In the segment, Howard Dean refers to data from the Research 2000 Massachusetts post-election survey and makes an argument that a huge proportion of Obama voters who also voted for Brown were hostile to the current health care bill because they wanted a more progressive version of health care legislation. Matthews is left sputtering in disbelief, because the survey data would seem to show that Matthews and practically every other talking head and pundit in the land has missed what a significant number of independent Obama voters in Massachusetts were actually trying to accomplish by voting for Brown. Tom Bevan thinks this is one of Matthews’ great moments on televison. In fact, it is a display of how insipid and shallow so much political commentary can be, especially when it is reduced to the format of cable talk shows.
At one point, Matthews asked, “Are voters crazy?” The right answer is that voters know what they want, but sometimes have an odd way of expressing this when they vote. An overwhelming majority of Obama/Brown voters and Obama voters who did not vote on Tuesday favor a public option, a large plurality of both groups opposes the current bill, and most also oppose the mandate. Brown vowed to kill the current bill, and this is something that almost half of Obama/Brown voters wanted. These voters apparently wanted to kill it because they believed it was too compromised. Another 32% of them support the bill Brown has vowed to kill, which tells us that their votes were probably cast primarily as protests against Democratic establishments in Boston and Washington, but they were also among the 82% of Obama/Brown voters who favor a public option. Of Obama/Brown voters, just 14% oppose a public option. If the first priority of many of these voters is to scrap the current bill, and if voters are angry with the majority party because it crafted a compromised bill, there is an odd way in which a vote for Brown makes sense. It will certainly not get them what they ultimately want (i.e., the public option), but it may achieve the immediate goal of killing a bill they oppose or only support grudgingly.
The damning thing about this segment for Matthews is that he did not even attempt to consider the evidence being presented. All that he needed to know was that Brown won, Brown opposes this particular health care bill, and therefore it is obviously an endorsement of policy views on the national level that even Scott Brown doesn’t hold. The conventional wisdom has already become entrenched that Massachusetts independent voters recoiled from “statism” or “big government,” when the survey data indicate that the independent voters who backed both Obama and Brown expected much more from Obama than the shabby corporatist compromise in the Senate, and they were angry enough about his underwhelming performance to go so far as to elect a Republican to demonstrate the depth of their dissatisfaction. As Matthews’ and Bevan’s reactions show, their protest message is one that virtually no one is going to hear or understand.
Matthews is left sputtering in disbelief . . .
Lame spin.
I don’t see Matthews sputtering. I see Matthews asking tough questions. I see Dean repeating the same talking point over and over, Sarah Palin style, then resorting to personal insult.
Your point is well made. Matthews is focused on details and missing the main point entirely. He sees the election as voters voting against the healthcare bill, other Dems are seeing it as “Anger from the right, against big government and out-of-control spending.”
Some people look at a forest and see nothing but trees.
Matthews is the one repeating talking points. He spends most of the interview filibustering his guest. He takes no account of evidence that contradicts his convenient narrative. That doesn’t seem like something worth defending, much less praising. I am not spinning anything. I wouldn’t waste my time or anyone else’s with that.
I wouldn’t waste my time or anyone else’s with that.
I’m inclined to agree.
It was you who made it the subject of a post.
Thanks for the post. As Bob Somerby has pointed out, guys like Matthews aren’t interested in actually finding out things about the world and adjusting their views to accommodate these facts. They just want to tell stories, write novels, and spin narratives that entertain them and that are consistent with their deeply held views. In Matthews’ mind, any time the Dems run into trouble it must be because they’ve given control to dirty, smelly, socialist hippies and the people have angrily rebuked their evil socialist plan. As you’ve pointed out elsewhere, the idea that the corporatist Dems running the show now are some-kinda radicals is pretty risible, as is the idea that Mass. voters voting for Brown must be universally in lockstep against any form of government-run or -assisted health care (like the kind they now have in their state). I’m a liberal, but I appreciate the work that you do as a conservative in pointing out how vapid our discourse is and the contribution that our brain-dead media overlords make to it.
You’re right, Dan- no pundit is seeing that voters are happy to give incoherent and useless, but united, Republicans a period of control in Congress whose only true point is to obstruct Democrats until they shape up. The more incoherent and lacking in meaningful initiative the current Republicans are, frankly the better they serve in this role in the eyes of the swing voters. Democrats need 1-2 national elections to ditch the center Rightist internal establishment and cohorts (Reid and the likes of Lincoln, Lieberman, Nelson, many of their Blue Dog House Reps, plus megalobbyist Tom Daschle in the shadows, in the White House principally Rahm Emmanuel) that are hampering and corrupting their current initiatives.
It’s fun reading Republican blogs about Scott Brown right now- it’s all Romney November 2002 redux. Which may be a very apt template/analogy. There’s an interesting amnesia about the abrupt collapse of Romney and an apparent statewide Republican wave with Massachusetts voters in late September 2004 when Tom Finneran jumped before he was pushed. Makes you wonder about what happens to national Republican prospects if/when Harry Reid jumps.