Chris Matthews: Obama's Worst Enemy

Every time Chris Matthews, and any of the other abrasive male television political commentators, go after Hillary Clinton, they hurt Barack Obama.

We saw it clearly in New Hampshire--women, offended by all the attacks on Hillary and sympathetic to her tears, turned out in droves, resurrecting her candidacy. Had Obama won, he'd probably be on his way to the nomination now.

After more than a week of defending his silly comment that Hillary owed her Senate seat and her standing in the presidential race to her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky, Matthews sort of backed off, but not really, conceding that maybe his remarks were a bit "nasty."

We can tell you what Mrs. Curmudgeon thinks about Matthews' view, but it wouldn't be printable in what we like to keep as a clean blog. Frankly, we share her view--a little more dispassionately. A lot of people don't like Hillary, and that's their perogative, but to say that's she's somehow not smart enough, not skilled enough, not politically adept enough to gain public office on her own is ridiculous. It certainly helped that she was the First Lady--that's a lot of exposure and name recognition. But she didn't get into the Senate because of sympathy over the Lewinsky affair.

Matthews, of course, won't keep his mouth shut--he gets paid good money to make an ass of himself. But if we were Barack Obama's people, we'd wish Matthews would concentrate on the GOP race.

Oh, and by the way, we think Chris Matthews owes his place on MSNBC to his much more talented wife, Kathleen (former News 7 anchor and now Marriott executive) pictured above.