Revisionist history is in full bloom on The Chris Matthews Show, all in the name of undermining Barack Obama. Now, Barack Obama is guilty of not-connecting with voters, unlike Bill Clinton.
There's been a lot of this revisionism in the remembered legacy of Bill Clinton amongst the Villagers. I have several theories as to why: 1) hindsight is always kinder as the rough edges smooth over in the intervening years; 2) some of the Villagers are too young and too intellectually incurious to know about the toxic culture of the Beltway during the Clinton years; and 3) in true bobblehead fashion, they don't really care that they said one thing during one news cycle and something diametrically opposite in another.
In the case of Chris Matthews, I have to believe that it's the third option in play. Keep in mind that the whole dubbing of the DC media as the Villagers came into play in their reaction to Bill Clinton and how they felt that he and Hillary did not properly show obsequiousness to the powers that be in the Beltway cocktail circuit. And Matthews was definitely part of that group. Even years after Clinton's term was over, Matthews could not let go of Clinton's infidelities and impeachment, even crediting that with Hillary Clinton's personal success as a politician.
But now, Tweety finds him the consummate politician, relating to the crowd in a way that Obama cannot, even editing the video of that CNBC Town Hall to not show Obama's response, and then bemoaning that he did not take the time to relate to her a time when he and Michelle suffered financially.
Um, what? Seriously, Villagers, with your own disregard for the the middle class that you still don't report that the Republicans are fighting desperately to keep "small business owners" like Bechtel and Koch Industries from paying higher taxes, we're supposed to feel that the President should bite his lip more and "feel our pain" for a higher approval rating? I'm not too young to remember how you and your fellow media mates mocked Clinton for doing that.
And ultimately, it's all more of the same push to make voters feel dissatisfied with Obama: he didn't get visibly angry enough during the BP Gulf oil spill, he's not empathetic enough to the struggling middle class now, his agenda is too left wing, his agenda is too centrist, he simultaneously hates big business and is a crony for it.
The question we have to ask ourselves is why there's such a big narrative push to instill dissatisfaction in some way--in any way--against Obama right now before the mid-term elections. I suggest to you that it's a combination of the elitism of the Villagers and the corporations that own them.