After much mocking by Ellen Degeneres about Chris Matthews' dancing abilities on his last appearance on her syndicated show, the "Hardball" host chatted with Degeneres, on Thursday's show, about the election of Barack Obama and actually grabbed a shot glass to toast his win with Ellen (audio excerpt here):
ELLEN DEGENERES: Amazing! And you must be thrilled? I mean what, what a moment.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well I am thrilled!
DEGENERES: Yeah.
MATTHEWS, picking up shot glass: To Barack Obama!
DEGENERES, toasting: Yeah. To Barack Obama!
A little later in his interview segment, Matthews also took a different kind of shot, the verbal kind, against the outgoing administration:
MATTHEWS: And I'm watching Hillary and I'm watching McCain I think, I think Hillary is gonna be Secretary of State. I think it's gonna happen.
DEGENERES: I think both of them are great and, and I love that he's meeting with both of them. It says something about him already. So-
MATTHEWS: Well it's not the old politics of Karl Rove and mean, and get even, and divide, and vengeance and all that stuff. I think the country is in a mood for no more mean. No more mean.
DEGENERES: I'm in the mood for no more mean. No more hiding goodness.
The following exchanges occurred on the November 20 episode of "Ellen":
ELLEN DEGENERES: You, you called it, exactly-
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah I did, yeah.
DEGENERES: -the way, this, this election. You said it would be exactly the spread that it was.
MATTHEWS: 52-46, yeah.
DEGENERES: It's amazing that you called it like that.
MATTHEWS: I think I got the Senate thing right too, 58. I think I got that right too.
DEGENERES: Amazing! And you must be thrilled? I mean what, what a moment.
MATTHEWS: Well I am thrilled!
DEGENERES: Yeah.
MATTHEWS, picking up shot glass: To Barack Obama!
DEGENERES, toasting: Yeah. To Barack Obama!
MATTHEWS: I think it's great that this country still surprises the world. And here's a great statistic. You know we were afraid that a lot of people who are white, would go into the voting booth and vote against him because he is black, and it would be lower than the polls. And this is the miraculous thing that happened. In my state of Pennsylvania, for example, this is all across the country. I talked to the guy who ran Pennsylvania the other day. He said, it was supposed to be three points, it was 11 points, he won by. So eight percent of Pennsylvanians voted for him but never told anybody he was gonna do it. So they, they, they wanted to open their hearts and try something new and give the young guy a shot, and they were embarrassed may be to say so because their neighbors were conservative, you know? It's so great that people. I mean if I were in a black family I would just love to be in a black family about 11:30pm that night, after the magic happened, and realize, hey you know some people are better than they seem. Some people are nicer, more open, you know, more liberal than they admit.
DEGENERES: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Isn't that amazing? Because you think people would, they're hiding their goodness.
DEGENERES: Yeah, yeah.
MATTHEWS: That's the amazing thing.
...
MATTHEWS: And I'm watching Hillary and I'm watching McCain I think, I think Hillary is gonna be Secretary of State. I think it's gonna happen.
DEGENERES: I think both of them are great and, and I love that he's meeting with both of them. It says something about him already. So-
MATTHEWS: Well it's not the old politics of Karl Rove and mean, and get even, and divide, and vengeance and all that stuff. I think the country is in a mood for no more mean. No more mean.
DEGENERES: I'm in the mood for no more mean. No more hiding goodness.
