Highlighting the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama’s famous speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Chris Matthews devoted a segment to discussing whether Barack Obama had lived up to the hope and promise he showed a decade earlier. The Hardball host had to work in a little bit of self-promotion, playing a clip of himself predicting Obama to be the first black president following that speech. The cable anchor, however, ignored his famous admission that the Democrat provoked a "thrill" up his leg.
Matthews blamed the poor economy in part for derailing the president’s hopes of a united America. He also noted that America began to perceive Obama as a leftist, which worked to undermine the idea that he was a president who could bring people together: “All of a sudden they realized he was a man of the left on things. He was a Keynesian, he believed in a big stimulus program. He really wanted a health care program and he did it. I think that probably shocked the center.”