CHRIS MATTHEWS: I tell you, Reverend, one piece of this thing that we always have to keep in mind as we deal with effective government, those of us who believe in effective, positive government have to be the ones who make it work. The right-wing loves when it screws up because it makes their case. The liberals, the progressives, the reasonable people say, 'You know, I need the government. I need it not just to protect me, I need it do a lot of things I need done to keep this society okay.'



But the problem is there are people in this country, maybe 10 percent -- I don’t know the number is, maybe 20 percent on a bad day, who want this president to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn’t president. You know, like a guy in baseball that used drugs. They want to be able to say you know, 'Well, he really didn’t have that batting average. He really wasn’t really the first African-American president. He really didn’t do healthcare. He really didn’t kill Bin-Laden.' There’s an asterisk.



And they have been fighting like that, people like Donald Trump, since day one. They can’t stand the idea that he is president. And a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn’t like somebody in another racial group, so what. It is the sense the white race must rule. That’s what racism is. And they can’t stand the idea that a man who is not white is president. That is real.



That sense of racial superiority and rule is in the hearts of some people in this country. Not all conservatives. Not even all right-wingers. But it always come through with this birther crap and the other references and somehow trying to erase Obamacare, erase his record in history and a big part of it is bought into by people like John Boehner, who is not a bad guy, but he knows the only way to talk to the hard right is talk their language.



And that’s it. This guy shouldn’t be president somehow. That he isn’t president somehow. That he is an asterisk. Just like you know Barry Bonds or somebody took drugs so, therefore he didn’t really have the batting average, it didn’t really count. (PoliticsNation, May 15, 2013)