At times I feel guilty for calling out Chris Matthews on his less than stellar relationship with reality. While his inside insight into Washington can be quite valuable, his unskillful reading of things left of center makes me wonder how much of our current problem he’s contributed to by planting crazy ideas in the minds of the general public.
But today’s segment on how progressives should appreciate President Obama left me in despair. How can an apparently literate man with access to the world’s information examine the last three years and conclude that Obama is anything other than a moderate with apparently no affinity for liberalism? I say “moderate” because that’s a more polite term than “rudderless” or pejoratives perhaps even more extreme.
I invite you to listen to this pack of lies and then tell me whether you think broadcasting this constitutes incompetence or malfeasance.
(About Obama):
There’s a couple of things up front. This guy’s a progressive. There’s the stimulus package—pure Keynesian economics, pure Roosevelt. The saving of the auto industry was very aggressive. . . industrial policy, if you will. And clearly, the healthcare bill, the first guy since Truman to actually deliver on a long-time, Democratic progressive goal.
(From Hardball, 3 August 2011.)
He goes on to mention Afghanistan and the Bush tax give-aways, but let’s stop there and examine these four lies.
Lie 1: That the stimulus package was progressive.
Lie 2: That the auto industry bailout was progressive.
Lie 3: That he has an industrial policy.
Lie 4: That the healthcare bill was either a Democratic bill or progressive.
Most of the stimulus package was the “tax cut”. In other words, it was a Republican bill. The auto industry bailout was neither progressive nor regressive. It just saved a major part of our economy from going under. Can any of you tell me what the industrial policy is that the Obama Administration has been thumping? And the healthcare bill…pulease. This Republican bill (stamped “Democrat” with barely visible ink over the cover page) is designed to force more money into the healthcare sector—at the expense of the necessities of life. I have to say, if that’s the best he can do to try to make the Obama Administration look progressive, well, he’s got a long way to go.
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