Chris Matthews, Intellectual Coward

Forget last night's debate.  The mainstream media is trying to spin it as a devastating Obama win and they can't get away with that any more.  People can see for themselves.  Even if they missed the entire debate, there are places online to see it in it's entirety.  The president came across as petty and mean-spirited.  He came across as having a suddenly new position on sequestration that even his own camp had to backtrack on afterwards.  In other words, the debate was at best for Obama a draw - not even a win on points.  In the big picture the debates helped Romney far more than Obama.  So forget last night's debate, let's focus a little bit on some of the untenable positions the media - in this case Chris Matthews - put themselves in, in defense of this president.

Post debate, Chris Matthews once again made the immediate leap to racism.  Why?  It's not because of the president, it's because of intellectual cowardice.

Watch the video here:  Chris Matthews: 'Racial hatred' drives support for Romney on right - The Hill's Video.  Here's the excerpt:

Speaking after Thursday night's debate on MSNBC, Matthews accused Romney of "pulling back" from many of the foreign policy positions he had taken during the primary. When host Rachel Maddow wondered why Romney might be "reversing himself" from his stated positions during the primary and whether that could dampen his support among his conservative base, Matthews dismissed such a possibility.

"I think they hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy al Qaeda. Their No. 1 enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred, hatred for Obama. And we can go into that about the white working class in the South and looking at these numbers we're getting the last couple days about racial hatred in many cases … this isn't about being a better president, they want to get rid of this president," he said.

Why does this represent intellectual cowardice?  Matthew's wants to be able to defend the president uncontested   He's tried to orchestrate a situation where he can argue the president is an awesome president and if you disagree, particularly with any aplomb, he can simply tag you as a racist and not have to defend the president in any factual way.  Many liberal pundits argue from a weak starting point but at least try to argue based on facts as they see them.  Matthews is trying to avoid real debate, and that puts him in the class of name-calling buffoons, not worthy of serious consideration for debate - as if anyone thought that way about him anyway.