Chris Matthews has a fundamental and incurable problem with independent-minded women - and with any luck it will finally cost him his job.

Matthews has spent most of his career trashing Bill and Hillary Clinton, as ThinkProgress has documented. His Hillary-bashing got so out of control before the New Hampshire primary that he contributed enormously to the anti-sexism backlash that drove women to give Hillary her astonishing victory. That backlash now has a name, thanks to Pam Spaulding:

"The Tweety Effect," where the misogyny of a talking head in the MSM so enrages a demographic that they go out and vote in a manner that will put egg on the face of the talking head.

During the primary night coverage, Rachel Maddow tried to tell Matthews directly that he was being blamed (or credited) for Hillary's backlash win. But Matthews dismissed Maddow sarcastically, saying "My influence in American politics looms over the people. I'm overwhelmed myself."

And the morning after Hillary's win, Matthews continued attacking Hillary on Morning Joe:

I think the Hillary appeal has always been somewhat about her mix of toughness and sympathy for her. Let's not forget -- and I'll be brutal -- the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it.

She didn't win there on her merits. She won because everybody felt, 'My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,' right? That's what happened." That's how it happened. In 1998 she went to New York and campaigned for Chuck Schumer as almost like the grieving widow of absurdity, and she did it so well and courageously, but it was about the humiliation of Bill Clinton.

The independent-minded women of The View didn't like this attack one bit, and they let him have it on their Thursday show. And this freaked Matthews out so completely that he went back on Morning Joe on Friday to defend himself - and further dug his own grave. (Video available at Raw Story.)

Matthews defended his argument by tracing Hillary's Senate campaign to the 1998 mid-term elections, when Hillary traveled to New York to campaign for Senate candidate Chuck Schumer. According to Matthews, Hillary's poised campaigning - in spite of her national shame - won her praise and gave Rep. Charlie Rangel the idea to encourage her to run for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Pat Moynihan. Matthews then went on to insist no one could argue with his version of history.

But Matthews is wrong - and once again because he's blind to women. The first person to urge Hillary to run for office in New York was the New York State Democratic Party chair at the time, Judith Hope. And she suggested it one month before the Monica Lewinsky story broke on January 17, 1998, when Hillary's popularity in New York was "unstoppable."  It's on page 34 of "Hillary's Turn" by Michael Tomasky:

The notion first came to her, Hope says, and the White House Christmas party in 1997, when she was talking with the president about his, and his wife's unstoppable popularity in New York. That night, Hope says, she mentioned to the president that "maybe Hillary has a future in New York." Shortly afterward, she relayed the gist of the conversation to Frederic Dicker, the New York Post's pitbullish Albany bureau chief. On December 8, Dicker ran the first news item speculating that Hillary might run for the Senate from New York at the top of his usual Monday column.

While Hillary did wow the crowds at two New York fundraisers in the Hamptons in the summer of 1998, there's no indication that Charlie Rangel was there. According to Tomasky, Rangel first proposed her candidacy during a trip to the Dominican Republic in September.

Mika Brzenzski didn't dispute the chronology of Hillary's campaign visit, but focused instead on Matthew's argument that "she didn't win there on her merits." She tried to remind Matthews that it was ludicrous to say Hillary's "standing up under humiliation" was the reason she could win a U.S. Senate seat, that she entered the race after a long career of both policy and politics, and won the seat on her merits. 

But Matthews was too angry to grant Mika's point, kept rabidly insisting that there could be no other interpretation of history than his own - even though he was wrong - and sneeringly challenged the women of The View to a debate on political history.

"If Barbara Walters wants to debate history, and politics and what's happened in this country the last 50 years, if she wants to go on Jeopardy and see what she knows and what I know, I'll take her on," Matthews promised. "If any of the women on that show want to take me on on historic political information ... let's talk political history. Let's talk facts, not opinions, facts, and I'll take them on."

The person Matthews should debate is Hillary Clinton - both because it would show everyone how smart she really is, and because it would expose Matthews for the sexist pig that he is - just as Hillary exposed the two Republicans who sneered at her in the 2000 and 2006 Senate debates.

Matthews' career of Clinton-bashing is a good enough reason for him to be fired from MSNBC, but his never-ending naked sexism is definitely grounds for explusion from a network that wants to be credible in the eyes of the majority of America's voters - namely women.

Update 1: What a hoot! Bill O'Reilly is attacking Matthews for his "personal attack" that "the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." Of course O'Reilly isn't really trying to defend Hillary, he's just waging war against MSNBC because Olbermann slams him every night.

Update 2: Media Matters would like you to ask MSNBC a question:

Does Chris Matthews have a problem with women?

Using overtly sexist language, he has referred to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a "she devil" and compared her to a "strip-teaser." He has called her "witchy" and likened her voice to "fingernails on a blackboard." He has referred to men who support her as "castratos in the eunuch chorus." He has suggested Clinton is not "a convincing mom" and said "modern women" like Clinton are unacceptable to "Midwest guys." He has called her "Madame Defarge" and "Nurse Ratched."

Had enough? Contact MSNBC to tell them what you think.

MSNBC
viewerservices@msnbc.com
MSNBC TV
One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, N.J. 07094
MSNBC contacts

Chris Matthews
hardball@msnbc.com

Update 3: Digby reminds us of another time Matthews got his political history utterly and completely wrong:

Michael, Michael, there's a big difference between what happened to Al Gore and John Kerry. John Kerry got hit unfairly by the Swift Boats attacking his service to his country. They conflated his opposition to the war when he came back which we can all argue about, and his service to his country which is not really arguable. They trashed him.

But in terms of Al Gore, he's the one who said he created the internet, he's the one who put out the word that he's the subject or the role model for Love Story, that he pointed the country's attention to Love Canal. He stuck himself into that story.

And when Marty Peretz's daughter wrote that story in Vanity Fair a couple of months ago, I'm sorry, she didn't make the case. Gore got himself in those problem areas by vanity and showing off an trying to make himself cool. But John Kerry got unfair treatment. I think it's a big difference guys.

Sorry Chris, Al Gore said none of those things, and if you haven't researched them to find out the truth, you're no better than Joe Klein, who famously wrote: "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

Update 4: Greg Sargent nails Matthews for his overnight back-flip:

Last night, Matthews said: "I give her a lot of personal credit; I will never underestimate Hillary Clinton again."

But by this morning Matthews had already forgotten his newfound respect for her. He said: "The reason she's a U.S. Senator, the reason she's a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on the merits..."

Put aside for a sec just how loathsome this statement is on its own terms. The larger point here is that a mere half-day after acknowledging that he'd gotten it wrong and that she deserved a lot of "personal credit" for winning over voters, Matthews was already imposing his own narrative on her entire political career, the current race included, saying that her past and current success have nothing to do with "the merits."

Surely the voters don't see Hillary this way. But already Matthews is back to speaking for the voters again, oversimplifying complex voter sentiment in the most crude and reductive fashion he can muster.

Lesson unlearned. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I ain't holding my breath.

Update 5: Matthews defended himself to AP by repeating his false history of Hillary's 2000 Senate run:

Matthews said his comments referred to the late 1990s, when Clinton made some appearances to support New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and impressed pols with her grace under pressure during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Shortly thereafter, she was asked to run for the Senate from New York.

He’s surprised more people — particularly the women on "The View" — don’t remember that as the birth of her political career.

"I thought it was an unexceptional statement," he said.

As I pointed out in the blog, the birth of Hillary's Senate run was a conversation between NY Democratic Chair Judith Hope and President Clinton in early December 1997, at least a month before anyone ever heard of Monica Lewinsky.

Update 6: Salon's Scott Bateman turned the Matthews clip into an editorial cartoon: