For years, Matthews was a harsh and misogynistic critic of Hillary Clinton — once calling her a “she-devil,” and attributing any of her success in the 2008 presidential primary to the fact that, as he put it, “her husband messed around.” More recently, his comparison of Bernie Sanders’s winning the Nevada primary to the “fall of France” to the Nazis was a horribly offensive gaffe given Sanders’s Jewish heritage and his having lost family members to the Holocaust.
But for me, an occasional member of the “Hardball” audience, there was something worse.
With his reported $5 million annual salary, he wielded enormous influence. For many years, he had the power to sway public opinion on the crucial topics of the day. Not infrequently, he failed the main test of someone in that role. He was ready to offer his own views, but not prepared to hear those of his guests or to bring deep knowledge to the conversation.
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