In some ways, the gaffetastic Chris Matthews is the Joe Biden of cable news. Tonight on his Hardball program, the liberal pundit seemed to suggest that Blockbuster video stores are a fairly ubiquitous thing in suburban and small-town America, even in "hollowed-out" cities going through hard economic times. In point of fact, Blockbuster Video closed up shop entirely in January of 2014, felled by the ease and convenience of cable TV video-on-demand and video-streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Matthews made the quip in the midst of a discussion with Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and David Axelrod over internal strife in the Democratic Party about the question of approving the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which most Republicans and President Obama support. Here's the relevant transcript:
MSNBC
Hardball
April 16, 2015CHRIS MATTHEWS, anchor to David Axelrod: David, that's always the best argument against free trade. A point defense kind of thing. If you look in particular areas, Michigan City, a lot of the a lot of Midwestern cities have nothing less than a Blockbuster and a diner left, if they have the diner, and if they have the Blockbuster. They're hollowed-out cities.
So when you look at trade that way, city by city, section by section, it's a hard fight. If you look at the whole country, and you look at the Silicon Valley or 128 Massachusetts, areas of the country which have boomed through high-tech and other means, it looks pretty good. How's it balance out to you?
