Having transcribed for my work just about every Hardball and Tucker for the past two years, I've finally decided it's a good time to take a look back and get a bit of perspective on how the campaign narrative has evolved over the past 15 months.
I offer here a chronological sampling of some of the most memorable quotes I've found in my personal files from these shows. I do the last 20 minutes of Hardball, which is the "Politics Fix," and the second half our of Tucker, so all of these quotes are from those parts of the show.
I also transcribe Countdown, but I decided to give Olbermann a break, because he's generally a decent guy, not to mention this was already a pain in the ass to put together (actually, there's one Olbermann quote in there).
Part one has all of 2007, which will be followed sometime soon by part two with the first three months of 2008.
I think this represents some decent reporting and some horrible reporting, but for now I will reserve judgment for a later post.
01-17-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Here's another question that I don't actually know the answer to, at all, if you are Hillary Clinton, how do you run against Barack Obama? The "San Francisco Chronicle" today has a very interesting point. They went through the voting records of Mrs. Clinton and Senator Obama and they found that of the 618 votes the two cast over the last two years, they voted the same way 576 times. These are essentially, ideologically, identical candidates. People say Obama is to the left of Hillary, no he's not. How does she run against him exactly?
PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Don't attack Obama. I mean, Obama is going to have to be brought down by his own mistakes, and his adversaries in the Democratic party, besides her, Republican attack groups, and the opposition research crowd. Because they are going to want to get all the garbage out and get all his votes out. They are going to want to push Obama to the left.
In the event Obama is nominated, they want to define him before he gets there. So, if I were Hillary, I would treat him with respect and deference, and move ahead, and do not go after him.
BILL PRESS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The way I would put that is I would out run him and out gun him. I mean, this is a Democratic nomination. He is going to have to go to every state, every Democratic chairman, such as I was in California, every Democratic club. Do you know who has been there before him, and already has them locked up? Hillary Rodham Clinton. So she has got the organization. She's got the money. She's got the machine. She's got all the consultants she needs. I agree with Pat.
02-15-07 Countdown
OLBERMANN: Well, so let's move on to somebody who is clearly a better comedian in Mr. Limbaugh. He called Senator Obama a Hafrican-American, which I have heard many friends of my particular color react to with just shock that anybody would say that in public, and which I assume reflects some sort of hidden desire on his part to use the term mulatto or octoroon or something else from the 19th century.
But, can you translate this latest soliloquy, when the suggestion is that somehow Senator Obama is not black? To what extent is that an implication that to be black must mean whatever, you know, negative cliché you want to throw in here, but that there's something that does not apply to him because he doesn't fit a negative stereotype?
PAGE: Well, I take Rush Limbaugh at his word. He says that if Obama doesn't want to be black, just say you're not black. Keith, I suppose if I sat here and told you, Keith, I'm not black, you would probably think you must be crazy. I mean, Obama was making a very common-sense point that race is defined by what people see, it's appearances, it's perceptions and everything grows out of that.
I suspect Rush is trying to make some subtle message that racism doesn't matter. That is a message that a number of conservatives have tried to put out. I don't find that it has much salience, however. In fact, remarkably, the people who say that we should stop talking about Obama's race seem unable to stop talking about Obama's race.
03-09-07 Tucker
SCARBOROUGH: Half past the hour on a Friday, time for the potpourri. And we begin with surging campaign of Barack Obama, which I admit I still don't get.
04-02-07 Hardball
ED ROGERS, FMR BUSH 41 ADVISOR: I mean, I have been dismissive of Obama. I think he is lightweight. But a lightweight with 24 million dollars is maybe not as light as I suspected.
MATTHEWS: You have such Republican values, Ed Rogers. In other words, the guy writes a book, he's got a hell of a biography, and you say, no but he's got some cash in his pocket.
ROGERS: The only thing he's ever done in his life is write two books about himself. Forget that guy. He is not credible. But suddenly he's put together 20 plus million dollars --
05-07-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: It seems to me that Obama is sort of stuck there in a distant second to Hillary. People like him. He is romantic. He's idealistic. He reminds people of Bobby and maybe Jack and maybe Lindbergh back before Lindbergh got political, back when he was popular, back in the 1920s. I have to always be careful about that particularl personality. But he is not catching up.
06-05-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Hillary, it seems to me that when people burn down stores, kill because they're Korean, or beat people in the head with cinder blocks because of their race, like Reginald Denny (ph), that's not a political statement. That's just crime. And Barack Obama seems to me to be giving a political justification to totally unacceptable, never justifiable behavior. And I think it's pretty outrageous.
06-11-07 Hardball
CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: But in a change election -- I have had this theory on Clinton, watching her in this campaign, which I think she is running a perfect campaign if she were running against an incumbent president of the United States. She should have -- this campaign she is running now would have been the right campaign to run in 2004.
It may end up being the right campaign and she may get there. But she is running a much better cautious change, competent change campaign that would have worked a lot better in 2004, and a lot better than John Kerry could ever could have pulled off. She might have beaten Bush.
MATTHEWS: Every time I talked to somebody, they have a problem with her, male, female, mostly female. I cannot figure it out.
06-12-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: ...the Democratic party is divided between the idealist and the interests. Hillary is winning with the interest. And, by the way, the interest crowd always wins.
07-10-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Despite his clear advantage over Hillary Clinton on the Iraq war and despite having raised a lot more money from more individual contributors than Senator Clinton has, he can't seem to make a dent in her hefty lead in most presidential polls, national ones anyway. Is the nice rhetoric he puts forth in Des Moines stunting his political growth? Should Barack Obama get tougher with Hillary Clinton about the war and everything else?
07-24-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Let me explain to the people out there. We're here with these gorgeous creatures of god here, Obama girl, Amber Lee Ettinger, Hot For Hill -- I guess that's Hillary Clinton's girl -- Taryn Southern -- that really is her name -- and Giuliani girl, Adolina Kristina, who we just saw in that.
These days there are new ways of communicating in American politics. It used to be you just paid for ads or did television interviews, radio interviews. Now people are putting out these -- what are they called -- videos. They're called what?
07-26-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: I like the way Ron Brownstein of the "L.A. Times" looks at the Democratic party the last 30, 40 years as I've been paying attention to it. Sally, it's always a battle between the candidate, in this case Hillary, who's very good with the interest groups. She knows all the different groups in the party. She plays them like an xylophone. She knows how to work their erogenous zones.
And then along comes this wonderfully romantic, Bobby Kennedy, Gene McCarthy, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, this figure that is going to change it all in a big picture way. And that person always drowns in the water. And the person who wins is always the interest group brilliant person. Howard Wolfson knows how to play the groups like a banjo. Isn't that the case here?
You're smiling because inevitably a cynic must say the Democrats always go with their interest groups because it's a party that's a combination of interest groups.
07-27-07 Tucker
CARLSON: I got an email from the Hillary Clinton for president campaign, the campaign manager. And she sent me this, since I'm on their mailing list. She said, this week Hillary Clinton has been attacked not only by the Republicans, but also be a Democrat, Barack Obama, who compared her to George Bush and Dick Cheney. Can you imagine? Here's what it says: "I guess this is what Hillary gets for being the strongest, most qualified, the most substantive, the most experienced, the most ready to be president. That's what Hillary has gotten all her career for being willing to fight for change."
In other words, Bill, they're picking on poor Hillary. The question is; is Hillary Clinton the strongest candidate, or is she the victim candidate. Is she the Oprah candidate?
08-01-07 Hardball
BARNICLE: Holly, talk to me about the cosmetics of the campaign. You have been out there watching various candidates. I was watching Senator Obama this morning talking about, you know, he will go into Pakistan if the Pakistanis won't. We will do it. We will get it done. He clearly is trying to leave, as Chris pointed out, that impression that he is going to be tough on national security.
HOLLY BAILEY, "NEWSWEEK": Absolutely. This is really sort of going back to this debate that happened last week over experience. You know, this is more of an effort to counter Hillary Clinton's comment that Barack Obama is naive when it comes to foreign policy. He wants to be seen as a leader, and I think that is what the speech is all about today.
JOHN FEEHERY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I think Hillary is going to be all over this. Pakistan has the nuclear bomb. Going after them without their consent is pretty dangerous. I think Hillary is going to bash Obama for this.
BARNICLE: Yes, I think Senator Dodd already is out of the blocks doing that.
CILIZZA: Dodd and Richardson and Biden. One thing I would say about that, however, is it does show you who is in that top tier when it comes to presidential candidates. If you are the guy getting shot at, it probably means you're ahead in polling.
08-02-07 Tucker
CARLSON: That looked like Barack Obama and as of yesterday, it sounded like him too. Obama gave one of the most remarkable speeches of the 2008 campaign so far yesterday, in which the former peace candidate advocated sending troops into the sovereign nation of Pakistan. Pakistan wasn't impressed, they said today. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton though didn't object to Obama's unilateral military strategy, but fellow candidate Chris Dodd did, and the "Quad City Times" newspaper in Iowa reported that local Democrats weren't impressed by Obama's bellicose turn either.
Has he risked his solid position with the primary voters and the left wing of his party in order to look tough? Here with their analysis, national director of Win Without War, and former Democratic congressman from the state of Maine, Tom Andrews, and the "Weekly Standard's" Matthew Continetti.
Matt, here Obama comes out and says he wants to move unilaterally into Pakistan if need be, into a sovereign nation, disregarding the will of that nation. And he wants to establish democracy in that country. He sounds so much like Bush, could you see voting for him on the basis of his neo-conservative foreign policy?
... CARLSON: I'm not taking a position on whether or not what he said is reasonable at all. I think you could argue both sides. You don't want to destabilize Musharraf's regime. Though he said he did want to stabilize it by bringing democracy to Pakistan, great idea. I'm only asking the question, what is the difference between his view of foreign policy and Bush's? I don't see any difference. They disagree about the war in Iraq is working. But on a philosophical level, they appear identical. They are both willing to take unilateral action against independent sovereign nations that don't want it.
08-07-07 Tucker
MATTHEWS: He (Obama) needs to engage her (Clinton) again and risk the costs. He has to be willing to risk the fact that someone like Howard Wolfson by midnight tonight will accuse him of talking to Holocaust deniers. I mean, he's going to have -- This is how hard she will play.
CARLSON: That was really one of the great moments in television history, when, on your show, Howard Wolfson said that. That was just shocking.
MATTHEWS: It was a mean crack. It was a hard crack on the knees. He was saying for her, don't mess with my boss. And they are learning the price of engagement. But he has to engage. He has to risk it. Because if he hangs back, he will continue to fall back in the pack. He has got to take her on, or else get out of the way and let somebody else take her on.
Right now he is the dog in the manger. He is right there, number two, keeping somebody else from the number two who might do a better job against Hillary. Right now, he is the best friend she has, because as long as he is there and does not engage with her and take her on, nobody else can get past her, which means she's coming home free.
08-15-08 Hardball
MATTHEWS: It seems to me that one of the problems for the Obama campaign for president is that the Republicans have decided that Hillary Clinton is going to be the nominee. And they want to keep saying that and addressing her already as the nominee.
21-08-07 Tucker
CARLSON: But I am confused by the logic behind it. If his nomination would energize black voters, then why are not black voters more energized behind his campaign right now? Why are so many black voters saying they're going to vote for Hillary Clinton?
... CARLSON: Well, I'll tell you the number that I absolutely don't believe is his prediction that his nomination would get turn out among young voters to spike 25 to 30 percent. Every election we hear these politicians promise that young people are going to get out and vote and they never do. They never do vote. Why would Obama be any different?
09-19-07 Tucker
CARLSON: I just think if you're Barack Obama, do you really want Jesse Jackson's endorsement and all of the problems that it will bring you? Here's somebody who has a history of saying outrageous, bigoted things, whose enabled by guilty white television producers, in my view, into coming on television. Any other person who behaved this way would be drummed out of respectful society. And poor Barack Obama, who I think at his core is a pretty reasonable guy, has got to do business with him. I guess he has to. Does he have to?
20-09-07 Tucker
SHUSTER: What is Obama waiting for? He's been so nice as far as he treats Hillary Clinton. There's John Edwards on the attack against Hillary Clinton. At a certain point, doesn't Obama have to get in the game?
BUCHANAN: Look what they are trying to do. They're trying to drag him down there to Louisiana, Jesse Jackson. That's the last thing he needs is that. What Obama has is he's risen above that. He's got -- I think his one chance is set the country on fire in December with rhetoric and speeches and really get rolling and see if that can carry him over. Other than that, I don't see it.
10-01-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: It seems to me that there's a chance that Obama could beat Hillary for the nomination. That chance is Iowa. If he wins out there, it will create an electricity across the country. The first African-American, of course mixed back ground. But the first African-American guy to really have a shot, that the voice of the future, no more Clinton versus -- Clinton and Bush rotating the job of the presidency like rotating old cans on a shelf in a supermarket, dusting off the cans because nobody is buying them.
You know, they are not afraid of Edwards. They are afraid of Obama. Can Obama find a way to use advertising and to begin to engage in this campaign that he can win in Iowa?
... MATTHEWS: I think if you put a face in the dictionary next to the word hope right now, it would be his face.
10-01-07 Tucker
SHUSTER: Let's talk about the third quarter fund raising. The quarter just ended. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama both came in slightly -- at least Barack Obama, we knew, came in under 20 million dollars. Hillary Clinton we think is going to be about the same. The reason this is significant, I think, is that Barack Obama's been sort of taking a beating in the polls. And if there's now seeing a parity in fund raising of this last quarter between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I think that hurts Obama a great deal.
10-08-07 Tucker
CARLSON: The Democrats, as you know, Bob, have decided that they want to go after voters of faith, evangelicals, religious people. Who knows if they will succeed. Here is Barack Obama at a recent church service in South Caroline, his latest attempt to reach out to voters of faith. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I guarantee you that this is not good-bye. This is just hello. Because I'm going to come back. And we're going to keep on worshiping together. And we're going to keep on building together. And we're going to praising together. I am confident that we can create a kingdom right here on Earth. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: First of all, where did he get that phony accent? Second, I'm going to come back -- I'm going to come back in glory to judge the living and the dead and my kingdom will have no end. Is he comparing himself to Jesus here?
10-15-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Gene, e-mails apparently have been circulating -- I have not received one -- questioning Barack Obama's religious identity, calling attention to the fact his middle name is Hussein, claiming he's a devout Muslim who is pretending to be a Christian. These are circulating around. It's not clear where they're from. It seems like the Obama campaign is calling attention to these e-mails. Why? My suspicion is these probably help Obama in a Democratic primary because they're so unfair.
... CARLSON: I agree with you. I'm not saying they're above it. I just don't see that's smart politics. It would be interesting to find out who believes -- I'm not accusing the Obama campaign of manufacturing this, but who exactly thinks this is going to hurt him with Democrats?
10-24-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Bloomberg News and the "Los Angeles Times" have a new national poll out showing Hillary so far ahead it is unbelievable; 31 points ahead of Obama nationally. And up in New Hampshire, look at this, two to one over Obama. Hillary, she's crushing the guy, Howard.
What is go on in this race? It's not just that Obama is losing. He's really fallen off the pace here.
10-25-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: That seems to be the case everywhere, Anne. The establishment, the interest groups, the older women, the working women, the minorities, minorities -- I don't know if gays -- if they're significant, but they're probably for Hillary too. It's unbelievable.
10-25-07 Tucker
CARLSON: A day before her 60th birthday, Hillary Clinton got another indication that she will turn 61 as the Democratic presidential nominee. In the latest "L.A. Times"/Bloomberg poll of Democratic primary voters, Mrs. Clinton earned the favor of 48 percent, to just 17 percent for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. That's a 31 point lead for those of you keeping score, and it represents an erosion in Obama's support among affluent and highly-educated voters. That was his base, has been since day one.
How close is the Democratic base from being the old mercy rule from little league baseball, where they call off the game to avoid embarrassing the losing team? Or put another way, the Red Sox versus the Colorado Rockies last night at Fenway.
11-01-07 Tucker
BUCHANAN: But if you get the -- if you get -- the vast right-wing conspiracy re-paints her as a liberal -- you can do all these things. I think they can be beaten, Tucker. I really do. Frankly, I think we would beat -- the Republicans would beat Obama and Edwards hands down.
11-02-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: You know why I like him on Iran? I like him on Iran because he doesn't sound like one of those groups from Motown, like four or five people all singing the same song on the Democratic and the Republican side. They're all singing harmony. They're all singing the same thing, let's go show how tough we are. And he's daring to say, you know, he's going to be there. Iran's going to be around when we're all dead. There's still going to be an Iran. We better start figuring how to deal with them.
... MATTHEWS: I say this is Barack's best week. He's coming out of the chute. He may well have chance to win this.
11-05-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Chris, it could be that we're all wrong. I've been saying for months now he's got to get tough with Hillary. Maybe he's found a velvet glove way of distinguishing himself from her in a way that looks prettier than I would have suggested. And he is right in peaking later, rather than peaking this summer. I was hoping that -- actually, I thought we'd have race by last May. Hillary ran away with it. We didn't have a race, she was so far ahead.
11-07-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Isn't it the craziest things in our lives, Gene? You and I are about the same age. Isn't it amazing; now we think of the African American guy as the safer bet. I mean, what kind of a world do we live in, where all of a sudden we're saying, he's a safe bet. Hillary is the one that we don't know about.
11-12-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: I also thought it was a powerful point intellectually to say that you don't want a president who supported the war in Iraq, who supports going to war in Iran. And he says, basically, you got to stop electing people -- supporting people who vote the Bush line. Here's Barack Obama invoking Dr. King and taking on Hillary Clinton at the same time. Here it goes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I am running in this race because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now, because I believe that there's such a thing as being too late; and that hour is almost upon us. I don't want to wake up four years from now and find out that millions of Americans still lack health care because we couldn't take on the insurance industry. I don't want to see that the oceans have risen a few more inches; the planet has reached a point of no return, because we couldn't find a way to stop buying oil from dictators.
I don't want to see more American lives put at risk because no one had the judgment or the courage to stand up against a misguided war before we sent our troops in to fight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: You know, I think I'm watching this -- Jonathan, I want Jonathan's thoughts here first. Jonathan, it seems to me I'm watching somebody swing for the fences. The ball may stop short of the warning track; he may not get a home run. But he's definitely going for a home run. Hillary is going for a bunt. She's being very clever. She's moving the ball. She may be following what Obama calls the textbook. But it's hard to get excited or to root for a bunt.
11-26-07 Tucker
CARLSON: But Oprah likes him much more than Michelle likes him.
11-27-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Barack Obama appeared on ABC News' "Nightline" last night where interviewer Terry Moran asked the senator, what does the word Clintonian mean to you. Obama responded this way; "You know, well, I wasn't sure that -- I didn't know that was a verb or an adjective."
Moran followed up by asking, quote, you've never heard that word, that it's a Clintonian tactic or a Clintonian style of politics.
Obama pled ignorance; "well, you know," he said, "it's something that probably bounces around the world of cable shows and I don't watch them enough to know. I haven't heard it used on 'Nightline' that much. Be more precise." Sniff, sniff.
If there were ever a Clintonian answer to the question of defining the word Clintonian, Barack Obama become gave it to Terry Moran. Here to determine if Obama's Clintonian answer on Clintonianism make him an honorary Clinton, we welcome back associate editor of "The Hill," A.B. Stoddard, and Democratic strategist and MSNBC political analyst Hillary Rosen.
I like Barack Obama. I hate it when he says stuff like this because it shakes my faith a little bit in him. What a BS artist.
... CARLSON: He could have told the truth. A Democratic political consultant who is a friend of mine said it best. Very beginning of this process he said, I watched them at the debate and she's in his head. She rattles him. He's afraid of her. He's a wuss, actually. I'm serious. He should just come out say, yes, she's Clintonian. That's why they call it Clintonian.
11-28-07 Tucker
CARLSON: Speaking of a happier story, interesting poll -- in fact we can put it up right up on the screen here. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies asked black voters what's your impression of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton favorable 83, Barack Obama favorable 74, John Edwards 45.
Why this is such a heartening poll, as far as I'm concerned, Barack Obama is the black candidate, of course, not leading among black voters, which tells you something really great, I think, about American society. People are not supporting the guy who looks like them just because he looks like them. If this is not a measure of racial progress, I'm not sure what is. I'm not a Hillary supporter.
12-07-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: And will Oprah really turn things around for Obama? Can she make him a true contender against Hillary as we get into the big primary states? ...A brand new "Newsweek" poll has Obama now in the lead out in Iowa...35 to 29 over Hillary Clinton. What do you make of that?
12-07-07 Tucker
CARLSON: What do you think, Rosa, of -- as an intellectual who likes Barack Obama, does it rattle you at all to see, you know, sort of the living representative of vulgar daytime TV sob fests (Oprah) come out and tug the heart strings of American women on behalf of Obama.
... CARLSON: If she (Oprah) can get them to read Anna Karenina (ph), she can get them to vote for Barack Obama. One is a lot easier than the other.
12-11-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: We're back to the politics fix. John, who was the big winner with Oprah? My theory is, she gave him a soulful endorsement, not a political endorsement, soul-to-soul. My soul says he's a good soul. Can that arm him against Hillary's -- what looks to be a coming attack from Hillary's people about his character?
12-12-07 Tucker
CARLSON: On the Fourth of July, she was a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination. That's what we told you, anyway. Now, as we hang the stockings by the chimney with care, Hillary Clinton is in danger of losing two early states to Barack Obama, a man most Americans hadn't even heard of in July, and who, just a couple years ago, was languishing in the state legislature in Illinois.
12-13-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: There's Michelle, obviously, Obama and Oprah Winfrey with the candidate. Let me ask you about that. You're diminishing it. I think what that helped to do -- first of all, he has an extremely attractive wife to put out on display. Everybody likes that. Everybody likes this incredibly attractive woman. Everyone thinks she's well educated, smart, hip and everything good. And then you got Oprah Winfrey, his best pal in the world out there, endorsing him.
I thought the benefit of Oprah was she said this guy's got a good soul. She wasn't selling his list of issues. She was selling his very being. And it makes it harder, I thought, after she got the big embrace around the guy, for the Clinton people to trash him.
12-16-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Chrystia, about this Obama campaign. What do you feel about this? I mean, I think there's something there. You know, race has been the San Andreas fault of American life since its beginning, since well before the American revolution. We've had a race situation in this country because of the slavery -- the enslavement of Africans and bringing them to this country against their will. And the world that we've lived in because of slavery, the guilt because of it, the anger because of it, the call for reparations by some, justified, I think, in the main, justified, and the guilt of white people.
The way we vote in big cities along racial lines. Here comes this guy, an incredibly good looking guy, you would have to say, young, incredibly well educated. And it seems like we've pushed aside the racial divide that's been in our face since we were born. Is that because Hillary Clinton is so polarizing, so magnetic as a focus of emotion, positive or negative, that it's taken the heat off this guy. Explain to me why people don't talk about Barack in racial terms at all, it seems?
12-17-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this, do you think that they're systematic in letting Bill do the attacks, show his teeth, trashing Barack Obama so Hillary doesn't have to do it? By the way, she wouldn't back him up today with David Gregory. You noticed that? Then, at the same time, leaking the fact that they're upset about the fact that he is a little out of control. Are they doing all this --
ALLEN: It's all orchestrated. It's all systematic.
12-19-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: So it all suggests a hard push over Christmas for all three candidates, a must win for -- It seems to me a must win for almost everybody but Hillary in Iowa. Hillary can survive a loss in Iowa. The other guys have to win.
12-20-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Let's talk about this fight here. My conjecture here, which I opened the show with, was the Clintons believe they have to stop Obama early. They want sudden infant crib death, is what they want. They want this guy to die before Iowa. And they are unleashing everybody they've got, everybody that wants every meal ticket they've got, everybody that wants to be a cabinet member, a VP, a staffer. They're all out there. Bob Kerrey, Vilsack, Billy Shaheen, Mark Penn, Phil Singer.
Everybody who has got a job in mind and they are willing to put the knife in this guy in the crib to get that job
12-26-07 Hardball
MATTHEWS: Patrick Buchanan, you are the greatest. Let's take a look at this -- let's take a look at the latest polling from Iowa, to get to the Democrats, which I find fascinating. These numbers could not be closer.
Let's take a look at them right now; Clinton, 29.2 -- this is a running average of the recent polls -- Obama, 27.3 -- we're in the percentage points here -- Edwards at 23.5. Then -- let's just go to the top three.
Pat Buchanan, you have been through these primaries. You won the New Hampshire primary. Talk Iowa right now. Is Obama heading toward victory, as you see it?
PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I don't think so. for this reason; I think he has been cut up a bit, Chris, by all this negativity coming out of the Clintons, you know, selling drugs, cocaine nonsense. And the rest of it --
MATTHEWS: I think you just upped it a bit, the selling part. I think the worst the Mark Penn message man said was the word cocaine. You have added the verb, selling cocaine.
BUCHANAN: That's Billy Shaheen's verb, as you know. He was the one that put that out there, and then you got the Bill Clinton saying, you know, it's -- it's a roll of the dice, and Hillary saying, I have been vetted. And then you got the Obama Muslim stuff.
I think it's very, very tight in Iowa, Chris. I think any of the three could win it. I think Obama has got to win it. And I think he is acting a bit testy over those 527s, which are putting a lot of money in for Edwards. Anything could be decisive, and 750,000 dollars is a good buy in a state like Iowa.
01-02-08 Hardball
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC ANCHOR: A lot of skepticism, though, in all of the camps, except maybe the Obama camp, that 60 percent of the caucus-goers are going to be first time caucus-goers. I think when that poll first came out there were a lot of people around here who were shocked that John Edwards was a distant third. If the numbers hold, if you have that type of turnout for new caucus goers and Barack Obama is the winner, then American politics is revolutionized.
That will mean he has just a hell of a lot of crossover voters, and Republicans and independents voting for him. And it will be very good news for the Democratic party.