Howard Fineman: Republican Convention ‘Mean’ and ‘Like Dropping a Bowling Ball in a Sand Box’

Playing to a crowd of Democrats in Charlotte cheering on Democratic operative Chris Matthews as he hosted his MSNBC program, Howard Fineman blurted “I survived Tampa and am now glad to be here in Charlotte,” before he derided the Republican gathering: “That convention was like dropping a bowling ball in a sand box.” (An apparent reference to the lack of a post-convention bounce in the polls for Romney.)

Fineman, who used to be Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and is now pretending to be a journalist at the Huffington Post, proceeded to argue: “If they were trying to reach middle America with that convention, I don’t think they did it. I think the speeches weren’t that good. I think the tone was kind of mean.”

Audio: MP3 clip

Fineman’s rant in full near the top of the Monday, September 3 Hardball:

I survived Tampa and am now glad to be here in Charlotte. I can’t resist. That convention was like dropping a bowling ball in a sand box. Okay. And -- I can say that, I can say that. If they were trying to reach middle America with that convention, I don’t think they did it. I think the speeches weren’t that good. I think the tone was kind of mean. And I think, as Chuck [Todd] says, the country’s locked in. It was more of a negative message than a positive message overall.

Let’s see if Fineman has any consisitency and denounces Democrats this week when they inevitably are negative about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and deliver a negative message blaming the previous President for today’s economic problems.