MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews, once one of the most prominent pundits on cable TV, used his post-election appearance on Morning Joe (Mediaite, 11/6/24) to demonstrate just how unhelpful political commentary can be.
Asked by host Willie Geist for his “morning-after assessment of what happened,” Matthews fumed:
Immigration has been a terrible decision for Democrats. I don’t know who they think they were playing to when they let millions of people come cruising through the border at their own will. Because of their own decisions, they came right running to that border, and they didn’t do a thing about it.
And a lot of people are very angry about that. Working people, especially, feel betrayed. They feel that their country has been given away, and they don’t like it.
And I don’t know who liked it. The Hispanics apparently didn’t like it. They want the law enforced. And so I’m not sure they were playing to anything that was smart here, in terms of an open border. And that’s what it is, an open border. And I think it’s a bad decision. I hope they learn from it.
You could not hope for a more distorted picture of Biden administration immigration policy from Fox News or OAN. “They didn’t do a thing about it”? President Joe Biden deported, turned back or expelled more than 4 million immigrants and refugees through February 2024—more than President Donald Trump excluded during his entire first term (Migration Policy Institute, 6/27/24).
Human Rights Watch (1/5/23) criticized Biden for continuing many of Trump’s brutal anti-asylum policies; the ACLU (6/12/24) called those restrictions unconstitutional. How can you have any kind of rational debate about what the nation’s approach to immigration should be when the supposedly liberal 24-hour news network is pretending such measures amount to an “open border”?
‘Democrats don’t know how people think’
In one brief segment, MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews (Morning Joe, 11/6/24) was able to mangle the most important issues of 42% of the electorate.
“It’s all about immigration and the economy,” Matthews told Geist. Well, he got the economics just as wrong:
I think you can talk all you want about the rates of inflation going down. What people do is they remember what the price of something was, whether it’s gas or anything, or cream cheese, or anything else, and they’ll say, “I remember when it was $2, and now it’s $7.” But they remember it in the last five years. That’s how people think. Democrats don’t know how people think anymore. They think about their country and they think about the cost of things.
The suggestion here is that success in fighting inflation would not be bringing the rate of price increases down, but returning prices to what they were before the inflationary period. That’s called deflation, a phenomenon generally viewed as disastrous that policy makers make strenuous efforts to prevent.
A decade ago, the Wall Street Journal (10/16/14) described “the specter of deflation” as “a worry that top policy makers thought they had beaten back”:
A general fall in consumer prices emerged as a big concern after the 2008 financial crisis because it summoned memories of deep and lingering downturns like the Great Depression and two decades of lost growth in Japan. The world’s central banks in recent years have used a variety of easy-money policies to fight its debilitating effects.
Paul Krugman (New York Times, 8/2/10) noted that
in a deflationary economy, wages as well as prices often have to fall—and…in general economies don’t manage to have falling wages unless they also have mass unemployment, so that workers are desperate enough to accept those wage declines.
It’s natural for ordinary consumers to think that if prices going up is bad, prices going down must be good. For someone like Matthews to think that, when he’s been covering national politics for more than three decades, is incompetence.
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Thank you! I don’t know why they’re bringing him back on. He has always been a know-nothing.
You just don’t get it. The public perception on immigration was echoed by Matthews. As for inflation, the things that most pelple buy–esp. groceries–have taken a terrific increase; that’s what people think of as inflation. The Dems. have fallen asleep at the wheel and run off the road to election in the near future.
To the extent that’s the public perception, it’s wrong. Media talking heads reinforcing incorrect analysis is a problem. That’s the point of the article.
My food stamp benefits increased about three-fold with the steep inflation of groceries. In evaluating the suitability of the economic acceptability of a grocery item, it’s difficult to acclimatize to the new normal. I priced a honeydew melon yesterday for $8. I didn’t buy it, although I did an 8 pound bag of potatoes for $3. Or that it to say the government bought it for me. In many ways I’ve been insulated from the shocks of inflation. Economist Dean Baker says there are many reasons to be optimistic about the economy.
WRONG !! You and the Harris people (still) didn’t get it at all; they were playing to a narrow base of the elite people they know best. No one else as evident in the election results. A disaster occurred and they were their own worst enemy.
FAIR is so lost. Imagine quoting elite corporate media *economic* pundits – as if their pronouncements are neutral and valid – to argue against elite corporate media *political* pundits. All in defense, apparently, of elite Democrats who you think scored some great victory for regular people (who just didn’t realize it!) by allegedly bringing down the rate of price increases *just enough* and *not too much*?!?!
There’s little more contemptible than the celebrated objectivity of US journalism. I want my reporters to have an agenda. To have an ideal of the world they’d like, to compare it against what they have to report. For example, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are much more the journalists than hacks of legacy media like David Muir.
Total denial here, it’s incredible, by in large Chris Mathew’s is correct and why don’t you get it ??
Fact wise, here is but one key demographic group for illustration purposes. Take Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, core areas with very high numbers of Hispanics that often had little in common on Election Day other than backing Republican Trump over the Democrat Harris for president.
Trump made major inroads in heavily Puerto Rican areas of eastern Pennsylvania where Harris spent the last day of her campaign. Trump turned South Texas Rio Grande Valley, a major crossing point and longtime Democratic stronghold which is populated both by both newer immigrants and the Tejanos who trace their roots for numerous generations.
Trump also improved his numbers with various Hispanic groups (Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Colombian, Puerto Rican, etc) along Florida’s Interstate 4 corridor (Tampa Bay to Orlando), Notably Trump was the first Republican since 1988 to win Miami-Dade County of Florida, an area with the highest share of immigrants in the State. Yes, Texas and Florida are already reliably Republican, but with more Hispanics turning away from Democrats in future races it could further dent the party’s so called “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which nailed down Trumps journey back into the White House. This shift will also make it harder for Democrats to win in the West too, in states such as Arizona and Nevada where as of this writing Nevada went for Trump.
At the end of the day the MSM and Democratic propaganda warnings that the word will end if Trump wins did not work and arguably the reverse happened. Now the party, their highly educated, rich elite and powers to be must figure out how to win back votes from a critical and fast-growing group.
I agree with the others in the comments. The voters are not happy with people try to explain away their problems. Which is exactly what you’re trying to do. Matthews is right here, people are unhappy and you shouldn’t be telling them their wrong for feeling that way. You’re doing exactly what missed the mark, and frankly always does for Democrats messaging.
Life long leftist
I’ve got nothing to do with Democrats. I agree the DNC is incompetent at best.
If you think media are not relevant to how people feel about national issues, why are you reading FAIR? Feelings about events in the real world come from somewhere. Regarding immigration and causes of inflation, to some extent they come from stories in the media.
If Pres. Biden deported more immigrants than Pres. Trump but people believe the border is open and its Pres. Biden’s fault, where does that come from? If people believe that inflation is extreme and it’s the President’s fault while monopolistic corporations don’t even deny they are gouging opportunistically, where does that come from?
It’s the media – that’s the point of the article.
Deported is the wrong question and metric. Admitted (by the CBP) is the correct metric and proper question. Under the Biden administration, there have been 6.4 million ‘encounters’ outside official ports of entry along the southern border so far, with the yearly average more than quadruple that of the Trump administration, according to an analysis of the (Biden Government) CBP data.
In addition, CBP agents have registered more than 1.6 million encounters at official ports of entry with migrants deemed “inadmissible,” some of whom are allowed to temporarily enter the country. Look it up for yourself. Conservative groups have reported more than 11 million people actually crossed the border and were never ‘encountered’ by the CBP. Its probably ‘fair’ to say several million more did in fact sneak in. Then we have millions who over stayed their Visa’s, etc, etc, etc.
Duh … critical analysis from ALL view points is whats necessary here and Mathew’s has some valid points. You know Harris lost every single swing state and saw former President Trump gain on Democrats in most blue states. Washington was the only state in the union that moved toward Harris as compared to the 2020 presidential contest. Trump appeared to see some of his biggest gains in California, where votes are still being counted, and in New York and New Jersey. Wake up and I call that red alert.
Thanks for the critical analysis
Wow its not complex people. Democrats need to move on from their fascination with La La La land Hollywood and all these A-list celebs, along with the idea that those endorsements help them. Any notion, and if we think if Beyoncé is on stage for Dems, that it will solve all the problems is nuts. Honestly and what most people don’t realize is that it actually makes things worse. It reinforces this perception that the Democrats are in fact the party of elites and have zero clue what us working class folks are going through.
My letter to the editor:
Editor
It is disappointing to see Chris Matthews so frightfully misjudge the Dims failure on November 5. Harris trumpeted her endorsement by a slate of the worst people, war criminals all: George Bush, Dick Cheney and daughter Liz, Mitt Romney, Alberto Gonzalez, ad nauseam.
Not to speak of the likely critical Dim support for the crimes of March 19, 2003, concomitant with their support of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and Palestine today. War crimes lost today to US America’s five minute historical memory: the aforementioned Rahm Emanuel, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and the other Dims who consented to the war of aggression, the supreme war crime according to the Nuremberg Protocols.
Chris Matthews would have us believe however the Dims lost over their handling of immigration. Many immigrants have been driven from their homes by US and Western foreign and economic policy. Few choose the braving of the Darien Gap, the desert southwest, or the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dingy willingly. Moreover, the US labor force requires immigrant labor. It enriches US America more widely, as well.
I don’t typically disagree with you but your economic analysis is all wrong. The reason liberal pundits got it wrong was because they don’t have to worry about affording the basic staples they need to live. When someone who does have to worry about affording basic staples see corporations boasting about record profits, they then know inflation is an an excuse to cover up price gouging. It doesn’t take a genius to think that if General Mills or Exxon were forced to roll back their prices, there profits would go down. If they returned to the level they were at before the price gouging, then there wouldn’t be a problem with inflation or deflation. If there wasn’t a problem in the economy before the price gouging, why would there be a problem if the price gouging was reversed? Instead, people are being told, this is the new normal, get over it. It’s no wonder why Trump won.