“Hardball” host Chris Matthews found himself over the weekend agreeing with conservatives who say the Democratic Party has drifted too far leftward.
A panel on NBC’s “Meet the Press” covered President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office Sunday, which prompted host Chuck Todd to cite a recent op-ed by Matthew Continetti of The Washington Free Beacon. Mr. Matthews agreed with the assertion that Democrats are culturally out of touch with much of the United States.
“A lot of it’s cultural, not just economics,” Matthews said. “I think that the position Hillary Clinton, for example, took on abortion, late-term abortions … federal funding, get rid of the Hyde Amendment, pushed too far. I think a lot of the people [who] came out and voted in Pennsylvania, where I’m from, were pro-lifers. With all of Trump’s problems — morally, personally, whatever — they didn’t like Hillary’s position on the cultural issues.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign took Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes on Election Day, along with other states that pundits often framed as reliably “blue.” The Republican billionaire defeated his Democrat challenger by capturing 306 Electoral College votes to Mrs. Clinton’s 232.
“What the Democratic Party has yet to understand is that its social and cultural agenda is irrelevant or inimical to the material and spiritual well being of their former constituents,” Mr. Continetti wrote April 29. “And until the Democrats recognize this fact, their next 100 days will be no better than their first.”
