Chris Matthews appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday to discuss the “wicked” position Nancy Pelosi is in as she struggles to convince Democrats who are against authorizing President Obama to attack Syria, to vote to do just that to “save the President’s hide:”
Let’s go all the way down to the final stretch here. The corralling. You’ve got [John] Boehner trying to corral enough votes that he can at least dribble out a few of them, and Pelosi stuck with the challenge of a minority caucus where she has to deliver a majority vote. You’re watching Boehner there dribbling out a few votes here and a few votes there, as the clock ticks down to zero, and she has to make up the difference. If you have the Hastert Rule in effect, I don’t think you even have this vote, but apparently it won’t be in effect.
So you’ll have minority Republican vote, and Pelosi’s going to have to make up the difference with the minority caucus. She’s going to have to come in with a supermajority of Democrats to support their Democratic President. This is a wicked position they have put her in. Maybe she can meet the standard. But I don’t know whether [Chief of Staff Denis] McDonough and the President walking along the south lawn the other day were thinking about the endgame where you know where it’s going to be played. The two corrals. Now which one would you rather be in?
I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the President’s hide. That’s a very bad position to put your party in.
Matthews sentiments echoed what D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton told Bill Press on Tuesday when she said, “If [Obama] gets saved at all, I think it’ll be because, it’ll be because of loyalty of Democrats. They just don’t want to see him shamed and humiliated on the national stage.”
Obama already suffered one embarrassing defeat when Great Britain voted against supporting any U.S. attack, and he can ill afford another with members of his own party.
Needless to say, Obama isn’t “thrilling” Matthews too much these days.
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