Chris Matthews is Trivial

I’ve been watching Hardball with an unidentified sense of distaste this week, and yesterday it struck me what my issue with the show has been. Chris Matthews is treating the election as if it were some sort of college sporting contest rather than as a matter of national governance. He has had the show complete with crowds of cheering college students, brass bands and cheerleaders waving pompoms. He shows us the “Hardball Scoreboard” daily, and discusses who is using what tactics.

Every day we get the latest gossip and discussion of the shocking behavior of Christine O’Donnell, a candidate in Delaware who is trailing in her race by stratospheric numbers and has absolutely no chance of winning a seat in the Senate. We get the latest polls, and who is winning the highest percentage of female voters who live on the first floor of multistory buildings on the west side of the street in states with names ending in the letter “o.”

This is not about who is going to rack up the most points on November second, Chris, this is about who is going to govern our nation. We don’t need cheerleaders and scoreboards, we need discussion of serious issues.