Everything Now about Race for Chris Matthews

On Hardball Monday night, Chris Matthews showed he just may be losing it—or at least why he's been steadily losing his audience for quite some time.

For months, Matthews has been playing the race card at every opportunity—or creating his own, even going so far afield as a weird attempt to make Alaskan Sarah Palin some kind of modern Scarlet O'Hara.

Wrapping up the show with "The Politics Fix," with guests syndicated radio host Michael Smerconish and Dominic Carter, Senior Political Reporter from New York 1, Matthews proved there is now no situation where Republicans may have an electoral or polling advantage that Chris Matthews can't allege is a race thing.

Matthews was complaining that his hero, Barack Obama, was actually playing "hardball," by keeping his promise to back former Republican Senator Arlen Spectre in his primary against loyal Democrat Joe Sestak, and by trying to ease disastrous New York Democrat Governor David Patterson off to the sidelines. Dominic Carter was focused on political reality, but Chris had another agenda:

DOMINIC CARTER, NY1 SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER:…the 800-pound gorilla in the room in all of this is Rudy Giuliani. They don't want Republican Rudy Giuliani to come in and take over the governor's mansion. That's the bottom line.

Handwriting has been on the wall for a while for Governor Paterson. This guy is looking at a Marist poll with 70 percent of the state's residents do not want him to run for re-election, bottom line.

MATTHEWS: OK. Dare I—dare I—dare I point to the obvious pattern. Hey, Rudy Giuliani ran against David Dinkins, beat him. Rudy Giuliani runs against David Paterson, they think he'll beat him. Is this Rudy running against an African-American again, exploiting the usual social riffs that come about in these situations in big states? Is that what's going on here that they're afraid of?

Yeah, Chris, I spot a "pattern here." Any excuse you can think of, you are going to do backflips to call Republicans racist.

Dominick Carter, did not even take one second to consider Matthew's outrageous playing of the race card out of suit. He jumped on it with both feet and quashed it. Maybe Chris got his Carters mixed up. This Carter, unlike the race-bating former President stayed focused on the race, not on race.

CARTER: No.

Not "maybe you have a point, Chris," or even, "Well, that's something to think about." Just a guy willing to stand up to a nationally known gabber who is hyperventilating all over the place and might not have you back again if you don't make him look good, and say "No." Good for you, sir.

CARTER: No, I don't think that's the case, Chris. I think the bottom line is residents—you know, I'm trying to figure out a nice way to say this. But David Paterson has not set well in terms of state residents, with the voters of this state. And I don't think it's a racial component in this. The Democrats just don't want to lose the statehouse. And they don't want the down-ticket candidates…

MATTHEWS: OK. Does Rudy have.

CARTER: …to go down with him.

After getting shot down hard by the sensible Carter, Matthews then went completely juvenile—and a little bonkers. With sniggering anatomical "humor" but his guests left him out on that limb all by himself, refusing to go there, either. Smerconish, who was not involved in the exchange, understandably stayed out.

MATTHEWS: Does Rudy have the stones to run against Andrew Cuomo?

CARTER: That's a good question. The…

MATTHEWS: Well, that's why I asked you, Dominic. You can answer.

CARTER: And that's why you're asking me. Giuliani is considering it, who knows? But if Paterson is the nominee, he's probably going to run.

MATTHEWS: OK. I'll give you a minute to think about it. We'll be right back with Michael Smerconish and Dominic Carter, who will tell us when we come back whether Rudy has the …stuff, using a nice word, to take on Andrew Cuomo, oohhooooeeeooooh!

The video above from the MSNBC website fades out before Chrissy's final girlish exclamation, not the first time that MSNBC has edited videos or transcripts to try and save their hosts some embarrassment. Unlike the case of Ed Schultz a few weeks ago, they only faded the video on Matthews, instead of faking the transcript.

One night, while Matthews was bloviating about his Moby Dick, former Vice President Cheney, he muttered under his breath while teasing an upcoming segment, "What's THIS guy still doing around?" The next day, it was nowhere to be found in the transcript.

In this case, the transcript reads "oooh," but that doesn't capture the sheer goofiness of Matthews's exclamation, which was neither as startling—or as manly—as Howard Dean'sfamous scream. Maybe he felt something on his leg?

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Everything Now about Race for Chris Matthews

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