In a moment of excess hyperbole, even for Chris Matthews, at about 7:33 PM EST Tuesday night, Matthews claimed “nothing's done since '65, when we did the civil rights bill,” to fix the nation's problems. Fretting about how the country cannot afford a prolonged Clinton-Obama battle in Pennsylvania because “this country's in a rut” with “everything” from the war to the economy, Matthews ridiculously asserted:
We can't fix anything, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we can't fix our health care system. Nothing's done since '65, when we did the civil rights bill.
We did “fix” the Soviet empire since 1965 and Ronald Reagan managed to fix an economy in a rut under the direction of Matthews' former employer, Jimmy Carter. And, of course, most of the welfare state was created and expanded greatly since 1965, including Medicare and Medicaid. But, naturally, Matthews failed to recognize that maybe the creation and expansion of these massive government entitlement programs is part of the problem.
Hat tip: MRC's Rich Noyes
Complete transcript of the rant delivered by Matthews, to co-host Keith Olbermann, during MSNBC's Super Tuesday II coverage at about 7:33 PM EST:
You and I, who are on the air all the time, know that the box this campaign came in is marked “change.” This country's in a rut, on the war in Iraq and pending wars elsewhere in the Middle East, the economy, everything, we're in a rut. We can't fix anything, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, we can't fix our health care system. Nothing's done since '65 when we did the civil rights bill. People want something done. Will that something get done if we have an election that bogs down in Pennsylvania with seven weeks of Democrats killing each other? That's a question everybody ought to ask, not just Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton.
