Chris Matthews has been on the war path this week. He has likened Bin Laden
to Michael Moore and to make matters even worse him, along with colleague Joe
Scarborough sat there last night and defended this analogy. If you haven’t kept
up on what he said then I urge you to visit
Think
Progress for videos and transcripts.
Considering he now feels people who oppose the war are the same as Bin Laden,
I figured it would be time to dig into some polling data and see how many
Americans might fall into his new category. The following numbers paint an ugly
picture for Matthews:
- 96% feel Iraq will play an important part of their decision when they
take to the polls this year. 45% feel it is extremely important, 40% very
important and 11% moderately important. (source: CNN/USA Today Gallup
poll 1/6-8/06) - 52% feel it wasn’t worth going to war in Iraq as opposed to 46% (source:
CNN/USA Today Gallup poll 1/6-8/06) - 53% feel things in Iraq are going badly (21% very badly, 32% moderately
badly) as opposed to 46% who feel things are going well (38% moderately
well, 8% very well) (source: CNN/USA Today Gallup poll 1/6-8/06) - 58% disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq as compared to 37% who approve
(source: CBS News poll 1/5-8/06) - 39% feel the Democrats would handle Iraq better as opposed to 36% who
feel the Republicans would handle it better. (source: CBS News poll
1/5-8/06) - 54% feel the U.S. should set a timetable for withdrawal as opposed to
40% who think no timetable should be set. (source: CBS News poll 1/5-8/06)
This means in the mind of Chris Matthews that a majority of Americans are
like Bin Laden. That might not matter to Chris, but I wonder how advertisers on
MSNBC feel about it. The customers of these advertisers have now been associated
with public enemy number one.
As Hunter at
Daily Kos has said, we are now at war with the media. These media giants are
worried about one thing and one thing only – RATINGS. Well here is an
interesting thing to consider into their ratings; Most Americans turn to the
internet for their news as opposed to cable news now. That means what we say
will reach more Americans than what some partisan hack like Chris Matthews will
say.
As part of that larger group, I have come up with a plan. People like Chris
Matthews won’t apologize on their own, instead they are going to have to be
force to apologize. The best way to do that is striking back where it hurts them
the most – at their wallets. Don’t bother writing MSNBC or Matthews on the issue
as it will just be ignored. Instead target their advertisers. If someone
advertises during Hardball, we won’t purchase their products. Considering the
number of viewers all the left wing blogs get in a days time, that would make a
major impact. Start writing letters to the advertisers of Hardball and let them
know that they are either with us or against us on this issue.