John Heilemann

 New York magazine's John Heilemann apparently thinks Barack Obama hasn't been liberal enough, as he told NBC's Matt Lauer, on Thursday's Today show, the "centrist" president was compelled to go on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to fire up his young supporters because they lost faith in their "progressive champion." After Lauer relayed a point Stewart made during his interview with the President, that voters were disappointed by Obama's "timidity", Heilemann agreed as he explained: "I think there's also kind of a fundamental confusion about who the President is. A lot of young voters...thought that he was a progressive champion and they've seen him govern in a more pragmatic, centrist way."

The following exchange was aired on the October 28 Today show:

MATT LAUER: When you see the President on The Daily Show, obviously courting young voters, if that group was, for lack of a better expression, fired up and ready to go two years ago for Democratic candidates and this president, how would you guys describe their level of enthusiasm and involvement, right now?

MARK HALPERIN, TIME: A lot less than two years ago.

LAUER: Why?

Chris Matthews this weekend winced in pain when a guest on his syndicated program said it's actually more likely the Democrats will lose the Senate than the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

As the "Chris Matthews Show" entered its final segment when panelists offer their predictions, New York magazine's John Heilemann said, "There are a lot of really smart Democratic politicos that I talk to who are actually a little bit more worried right now that it's possible Democrats could lose the Senate more easily than they could lose the House."

Matthews interrupted with a pained expression on his face, "That's like losing a dozen seats."

As Heilemann continued, the host once again interrupted, "Could [Sen. Barbara] Boxer lose in California?" 

When Heilemann said yes, Matthews grimaced, "You're talking tsunami" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

The panel of the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" this weekend campaigned for Hillary Clinton to replace Joe Biden as Vice President in order to assist Barack Obama's re-election in 2012 and set her up for a successful presidential bid in 2016. 

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, Chris Matthews on that evening's "Hardball" had former Virginia governor Doug Wilder and New York magazine's John Heilemann on to discuss the merits of this strategy.

The "Hardball" host must have found this quite compelling, for he decided to do an entire segment on his weekend program with guests Erin Burnett of CNBC, Kelly O'Donnell of NBC, Howard Fineman of Newsweek, and Heilemann.

After playing a clip from Wednesday's "Hardball," as well as a video of Clinton in 2009 saying she'd never run for president again, Matthews and his panel started the campaigning (videos follow with commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday demonstrated how the dissemination of Democrat talking points and marching orders via the JournoList can be far more effectively employed on television.

In a "Hardball" segment about a new Democratic National Committee ad that looks to connect the GOP with the "more extreme elements" of the Tea Party, Matthews chatted with Republican strategist Todd Harris and the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress's Jennifer Palmieri about whether the strategy will work.

What was most interesting was how Matthews, almost like a JournoLister, seemed to be drawing from a discussion he had with his panelists on last weekend's syndicated program bearing his name.

Before we get there, here's the relevant discussion with Harris and Palmieri (videos follow with transcripts and commentary): 

Chris Matthews made a delicious Freudian slip this weekend calling Barack Obama President Carter.

In the first segment of the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews and panel discussed what Democrats are going to have to do to win in the upcoming midterm elections.

The consensus was that they can't run on what they've "accomplished" in the past eighteen months because Americans are unhappy about the exploding federal debt and healthcare reform.

Quite surprisingly the famous "Matthews Meter" found twelve out of twelve show regulars believe the anti-Democrat feeling in the nation is so strong Republicans could win in a wave election this year without actually proposing an agenda.

This hysterically led the host to ask his guests, "Will the Democrats running for the House re-election, they're all running for re-election under the Constitution, and the Senate candidates, will they run away from President O-Carter?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

With Americans heading to the polls in less than five months, the liberal media have once again adopted their typical strategy of depicting every Republican candidate as being a far-right extremist.

Such was on display in this weekend's syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" when the host began the second segment by saying, "This week's primaries proved again that this anti-Washington year may usher in Republicans who owe a lot to the far-right."

Matthews then played a clip from his upcoming special "Rise of the New Right," saying after its completion, "Well, Tea Parties have had some luck with conservatives who have beaten establishment Republicans this year. This past Tuesday night, for example, Nevada Republicans chose a Tea Party candidate to go against Harry Reid. And she's not shy about her extreme views like killing Social Security and Medicare."

After a brief clip of Sharron Angle speaking at a Nevada debate, Matthews said, "And even mainstream Republicans like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina who won nominations this week in California have bent to the right in reaction to pressure from the hard-right."

Matthews then showed a Whitman ad wherein she was talking tough about illegal immigration followed by a Fiorina commercial that had the nerve to use "that tried and true conservative line 'The Democrats are soft on terrorism.'"

The host then asked New York Magazine's John Heilemann, "That's very hard-right talk; is that the smart talk to win an election in California?" (video follows with more transcription of this discussion):

Barack Obama's presidency goes the way of Jimmy Carter's if he doesn't get control of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

So said New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper on the most recent installment of "The Chris Matthews Show."

As the opening segment's discussion concerning the spill moved to a close, the host surprisingly asked his panel if  Obama can continue to "blame the previous administration, the oil patch guys, Bush and Cheney" for the disaster.

Readers will likely find the answers quite surprising (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

Speaking to New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann on MSNBC Friday, anchor Andrea Mitchell wondered if the Gulf oil spill could be a political opportunity for President Obama: "Is there an opportunity now to do something real on energy?"Heilemann proclaimed the disaster was "a triggering action for us to try and get toward a greener future...break our addiction to oil..."            

The discussion occurred during the 1PM ET hour on Andrea Mitchell Reports with Mitchell noting how the President was "trying to contain the political damage" from the spill. After she spun the crisis as an "opportunity," Heilemann argued: "I think this is one of these real moments for any president...what better moment is there than this?" Both Mitchell and Heilemann seem to share the philosophy of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Heilemann actually worried that the White House would not exploit the situation enough: "I think that for the White House to do that and not end up with a piecemeal, some kind of small bill – small ball bill – he's got to go really big and turn this into a crusade."  He described the "fear" on the Left that the administration was "going to end up settling for a small solution rather than the big one that really changes, fundamentally, our relationship to energy and the – and our climate."

One of the things taught in journalism schools, at least when it comes crime reporting, is that when someone charged with a crime, you carefully craft your rhetoric because in the United States, you're presumed innocent until proven guilty.

But what if you're journalist and you're making accusations of crime where there's not even a charge? On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time magazine's Joe Klein accused former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck of rubbing "right up close to being seditious," which according to the U.S. Code is rubbing right up close to being a crime. And even after the fact, Klein has stuck to his guns and didn't back down from that accusation.

"On the Chris Matthews Show Sunday, I said that some of the right-wing infotainment gasbags--people like Glenn Beck etc.--were nudging up close to the edge of sedition," Klein wrote in an April 19 post on Time.com's Swampland blog. "This has caused a bit of a self-righteous ruckus on the right. Let me be clear: dissent isn't sedition. Questioning an Administration's policies isn't sedition. But questioning an Administration's legitimacy in a manner intended to undermine or overthrow it certainly is."

Glenn Beck struck back at Joe Klein and John Heilemann Monday for practically accusing the Fox News host, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh of being seditious.

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Time magazine's Klein and New York magazine's Heilemann made some rather inflammatory comments about the trio this weekend on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show."

When Beck saw our piece at the Drudge Report Sunday evening, he said, "[I]t was like a horse stepped on my chest." 

"I love my country," said an emotional Beck. "I don't even understand how speaking out now can be sedition."

Beck then demonstrated how absurd AND hypocritical Klein and Heilemann's claims were (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

Liberals are all too often eager to charge conservative personalities of using hyperbole to gain a political advantage, especially when it contradicts their world view - whether it's suggesting the Obama administration is taking the country down the path of socialism, fascism or any other -ism.

However, it could be argued there's a different set of standards for those same people when they want to make strong charges. On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.

"I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, broke down video of a tea party protester, allegedly spitting on Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, like it was the Zapruder film as he and his guest John Heilemann of the New York magazine both claimed it reminded them of the integration of Little Rock Central High School, as Matthews blurted: "You know I just saw one of those pictures the other day, a woman down in...Little Rock back in '57 when they were integrating Little Rock Central High School with that wicked look of anger. I mean contorted face. Look at this guy!" [audio available here]

As Matthews dissected the video to determine whether or not the protestor landed a loogey on the congressman, one couldn't help but reminded of the classic Seinfeld scene that parodied Oliver Stone's crackpot conspiracy theory movie JFK as Jerry analyzes whether or not Kramer and Newman were hit by a "second-spitter."

The following exchange was aired on the March 30 edition of Hardball:

Chris Matthews demanded Republicans be punished for their, as he put it on Tuesday's Hardball, opposition to "everything that tries to solve the country's problems." During a discussion about White House strategy, Game Change co-author John Heilemann suggested to the MSNBC host that Barack Obama should make "Republicans pay for their intransigence," which prompted Matthews to question how best to target Republicans -- specifically Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn --who "pompously" laugh at the President, while opposing, "everything that tries to solve the country's problems?"

The following exchange was aired on the February 2 edition of Hardball:

Author, political analyst, and humorist Andrew Ferguson really lacerated the campaign memoir Game Change in the February 1 Weekly Standard. He pointed out the inside-the-Beltway media chumminess greeting authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann: "The authors are highly regarded political reporters—highly regarded, that is, by other political reporters whom the authors likewise hold in high regard (that’s how admiration works here)." But that doesn’t excuse a bad book. He began by isolating page 279:

"F— you! F—, F—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—, f—!!!"

McCain let out the stream of sharp epithets, both middle fingers raised and extended, barking in his wife’s face. He was angry.

Amazingly, these authors don’t offer the reader any explanation of this abusive scene that they might expect from reporters -- the when, where, and why:

On Monday, Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz assessed the new book Game Change by liberal elite journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and questioned its anonymous sourcing. He also noticed that the staffers of election winners never seem to have any gripes about their leading man. Halperin and Heilemann sounded like they’re still offering valentines to Obama on the campaign trail:

Obama is the one candidate in Game Change who most closely resembles his public persona. During the Rev. Jeremiah Wright uproar, his performance -- "calm, methodical, precise and strategic -- impressed his team immensely," with strategists Anita Dunn thinking "this is a guy I want in a foxhole with me" and David Axelrod being "blown away" by Obama's writing of a major address on race. [Italics by Kurtz.]

Perhaps Obama's character is unusually consistent. But the portrait may also reflect the fact that aides on a winning campaign had little dirt to dish and even less incentive, since many of them are now running the country.

Provoked by charges made in Game Change that Sarah Palin had to be tutored in basic foreign policy facts, Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, took shot after shot at the former vice presidential candidate's intelligence as he wondered, "Is it possible that her head was really that empty?...Has she ever taken an SAT afternoon exam?" and mocked "Don't put her on Jeopardy!"

Matthews invited on Game Change co-authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin to chat about various nuggets from the book but it was their stories about Palin that got the MSNBC host revved up, as he painted an absurd picture of neo-cons taking a "cruise" to Alaska where they found Palin "standing at the docks with an empty head saying, 'I'm willing to say what you want me to say.'" [audio available here]

On Monday’s Anderson Cooper 360, CNN’s Anderson Cooper extensively questioned authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann about their new book “Game Change” on subjects other than Sarah Palin, unlike his earlier interview of the writers on 60 Minutes. Most of the two segments from the interview dealt with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s role in the 2008 presidential election and in the Obama transition.

During the first segment, which began 20 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour, Cooper only briefly touched on Senator Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment about President Obama, asking one question on the topic. For the remaining five minutes of the segment, and for the additional five minutes of the second segment, the CNN anchor questioned Halperin and Heilemann about several episodes involving the Clintons during the Democratic presidential primary race, and about Obama choosing Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state. These ten minutes on his CNN program is practically the same amount of time Cooper devoted to the subject of Sarah Palin during his 60 Minutes interview of the authors.

Cooper revisited the race issue when he raised the subject of Bill Clinton’s “coffee remark” to Ted Kennedy about then Senator Obama during the second segment minutes later:

While a story on Sunday’s 60 Minutes about the new book, ‘Game Change,’ about the 2008 campaign, focused heavily on attacks against Sarah Palin by McCain staffers, it ignored numerous revelations of controversial statements by prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid describing Barack Obama as “light skinned” and lacking a “negro dialect.”

Acting as a guest correspondent, CNN’s Anderson Cooper cited the book’s liberal authors, New York magazine’s John Heilemann and Time’s Mark Halperin, who claimed that Palin was picked by the McCain campaign out of “desperation” after manager Rick Davis found her name on Google. At one point, Halperin went so far as to declare that: “They said, ‘there’s one Sarah who you see in public’– upbeat. But the other Sarah was the one that frightened them. It was someone whose eyes were kind of glazed over, who was literally not responding to questions, who was keeping her head down.”

Cooper made sure to highlight CBS’s role in Palin’s supposed downfall with the Evening News Katie Couric interview: “In her book, Palin accuses CBS News of editing the interview to make her look bad. But [McCain campaign advisor] Steve Schmidt told us Palin did poorly because she didn’t do her homework.” Schmidt slammed Palin, claiming she was “focused that morning on answering ten written questions from a small newspaper in Alaska called the ‘Matsu Valley Frontiersman.’” After Cooper mentioned Palin’s criticism of Couric’s “gotcha questions,” Schmidt proclaimed: “I don’t think that Katie Couric asked a single unfair question in that interview.”

Back in 2008, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) referred to then presidential candidate Barack Obama as a light-skinned African American with no Negro dialect.

Such is in Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's soon to be released book "Game Change" and was reported by the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder Friday.

According to LexisNexis and Google news searches, this revelation, posted by Ambinder at his Politics blog, received very little attention from America's Obama-loving media: 

On the Sunday, December 20, syndicated Chris Matthews Show – during which the panel weighed in on who should be granted various dishonors for the year – Matthews seemed to lump conservatives like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh in with what Matthews saw as "white tribalism" as he also fretted over the "birthers" who promote the fringe conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in America. Matthews had notably expressed frustration about "white tribalism" being stirred up by "idiots" in America at the end of last week’s show.

Matthews seemed to compare Glenn Beck and  Limbaugh to swine flu as he introduced the award titled "A Plague on Both Our Houses." Matthews played a clip of Beck going over the top in calling President Obama a "racist" on FNC’s Fox and Friends, but he did not specify any particular quote from Limbaugh. A bit later, after the BBC’s Katty Kay tied Palin to the "birthers," prompting Matthews to interject that "I think it’s white tribalism," Matthews brought up the new book of panel member John Heilemann of New York magazine, and set up Heilemann to blame Palin for "activating" racism against Obama during the 2008 campaign.

Matthews: "Was this something that was simmering, this sort of tribalistic resentment of Barack Obama being what he is?"

Heilemann responded:

If you needed any more evidence that the media meme regarding Sarah Palin not being qualified for vice president is nothing but liberal propaganda from America's Obama-loving press you got it on Sunday's "The Chris Matthews Show."

After the panel of New York magazine's John Heilemann, the Washington Post's Anne Kornblut, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, and the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page unanimously concluded that Palin was a horrible choice as John McCain's runningmate due to her lack of qualifications, they all agreed that she will be a serious candidate for president in 2012 if Obama wins this November.

Interesting hypocrisy, wouldn't you agree?

Readers are strongly encouraged to strap themselves in before proceeding to the following partial transcript of this astonishingly revealing segment (video embedded upper-right):

In what could turn out to be a classic "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment, New York magazine's most recent edition crowned Barack Obama nine days before Election Day:

The sub-headline for this forward-looking cover-story reads:

Conservatives are more racist than the population at large, and John McCain plans to "viciously" stir up racism to beat Barack Obama.  That is John Heilemann's belief, as propounded in his New York magazine article, The Color-Coded Campaign, and spelled out in a CNN appearance today.  The author even broke out the trite "Wonder Bread America" epithet to describe that portion of the country not lucky enough to be NYC.

Interviewed by Kiran Chetry on "American Morning" today at 6:32 AM EDT, Heilemann's jumping-off point was the question of why Obama's lead over McCain is smaller than the 10-15 points by which Dems are generically leading Republicans nationwide.  Heilemann gave short shrift to the possibility that Obama is a weak candidate, given his lack of experience and most-liberal-in-the-Senate record that puts him at odds with the electorate.  He focused instead on what he claims is an under-reported factor—Obama's race.  It was there that he equated conservatism with racism.

JOHN HEILEMANN: During the Democratic primaries during the exit polls we would ask people whether race was an important factor for them. And somewhere, in places like New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, 10 or 12 percent of the vote said race that was an important factor and voted for Hillary Clinton. And that's for many people a reasonable proxy to tell you about what the numbers were like for people who voted for Hillary because she was white, didn't vote for Barack because he's black.  And that number will be larger in the general election because general election is a more conservative electorate than the Democratic primary electorate was.

View video here.

Not that she is, but if Michelle Obama were in fact a Black Panther, what's the big deal?  So seems to think Michelle Bernard.

Anyone who imagines that Bernard brings conservative balance to the MSNBC panels on which she regularly appears should think again.  Yes, Bernard is head of the Independent Women's Forum, an organization with strong conservative roots.  And true, Bernard served on the 2000 Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee.  But as the Daily Howler has documented [see 1/3 down page], her pronouncements on Hardball have often been supportive of Barack Obama.  

More evidence of that was on display tonight when Bernard condemned the New Yorker cover in harsh terms and then, incredibly, seemed to say that there would be nothing wrong if the cover's caricature of Michelle Obama as a Black Panther were grounded in reality!

View video here.

Slip of the tongue, or was the man who gets a thrill up his leg from Barack Obama's rhetoric voicing his innermost apprehension at the prospect of Hillary Clinton regaining the upper hand?

On this afternoon's Hardball, host Chris Matthews was discussing the March 4th Texas primary with Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News, John Heilemann of New York magazine, and Norah O'Donnell. The MSNBCer made the point that under the arcane Texas rules in which the race is a hybrid of caucus and primary, it's possible for one candidate to win the popular vote and the other to walk off with more delegates.

That seemed to trigger Chris's anxiety reflex at the prospect of Hillary getting good publicity . . .