One of the things about the 2016 presidential election that most shocked the political elite and Democrats was the failure of the “blue wall.” “What happened?”, they wondered. How is it possible that people in states that Hillary didn’t bother even to fly over deserted her? How could decades of being told that they—as mostly white, mostly Christian, mostly middle class Americans—represented all that was wrong with America possibly have such a devastating effect on Democrats?
On Meet the Press, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews states that the Democrats have simply moved too far left on cultural issues, specifically on abortion.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
MSNBC host Chris Matthews said the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left on cultural issues during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”Host Chuck Todd spotlighted Washington Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti’s Friday column about the Democratic Party’s struggles in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Continetti’s piece discussed the party’s current weak governing position and lack of an agenda beyond opposition to President Trump.
In his assessment of the Democrats’ first 100 days, Continetti concluded:
That establishment is just as befuddled as its Republican counterpart at the current political scene. “I don’t know what’s happening in the country,” Hillary Clinton is said to have told a friend at some point during the recent campaign. This apprehension of distance between herself and the everyday lives of her co-nationals is one of the most perceptive observations Clinton has ever made.Her problem was she never figured out the answer, never came to realize that the various guesses she and Obama and other professional Democrats have wagered about “what’s happening in the country”—racism, sexism, nativism, gerrymandering, Citizens United, Fox News Channel and talk radio, Russia—are insufficient. What the Democratic Party has yet to understand is that its social and cultural agenda is irrelevant or inimical to the material and spiritual well being of their former constituents. And until the Democrats recognize this fact, their next 100 days will be no better than their first. [my emphasis]
Meet the Press‘s Chuck Todd read the concluding two sentences and then turned to Matthews stating that he thought Matthews would agree with Continetti’s conclusion.
Matthews nodded in the affirmative and provided an example of Hillary’s position on late-term abortions and the Hyde Amendment as evidence that the Democrats had “moved too far left on cultural issues.”
Watch:
The Washington Free Beacon continues:
Todd said he felt Matthews, the longtime liberal host of “Hardball” and a former Democratic aide, would agree with Continetti’s sentiment. Matthews pointed to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s shift to the left on abortion rights as something that alienated more moderate voters in states like Pennsylvania.”A lot of it’s cultural, not just economics,” Matthews said. “I think that the position Hillary Clinton, for example, took, on abortion, late-term abortions … get rid of the Hyde Amendment, pushed too far. I think a lot of the people [who] came out and voted in Pennsylvania, where I’m from, were pro-lifers. With all of Trump’s problems, morally, personally, whatever, they didn’t like Hillary’s position. I think the party moved too far to the left on cultural issues.”
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