By Noel Sheppard | September 15, 2010 | 11:11 PM EDT
Chris Matthews on Wednesday departed from the liberal media conventional wisdom that Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell's defeat of Republican favorite Mike Castle was good news for Democrats and President Obama.

Quite the contrary, the "Hardball" host has become extremely pessimistic about Democrat chances to retain Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, so much so that he likened his Party to the Titanic.

"The boat is sinking," he told fellow liberal David Corn. "The establishment is sinking."

When Corn tried to push back on Matthews' view, the devout liberal said, "I take O`Donnell. How many points are you going to give me?" (videos follow with transcripts and commentary): 

By Geoffrey Dickens | September 13, 2010 | 6:57 PM EDT

Well you have to give Chris Matthews credit for admitting the obvious. On Monday's Hardball, as he overlooked the bad environment for Democrats this midterm season, Matthews appeared grateful he didn't make his much rumored run for Pennsylvania's Senate seat, as he asked one of his guests: "Do you think it could be the year where guys...like me were smart not to make the run?" [audio available here]

The admission came during a segment in which Matthews, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza and local radio talk show host, Dan Gaffney of WGMD, were breaking down the prospects for Christine O'Donnell to upset Republican Mike Castle and go on to win the general election for the Deleware Senate seat with Gaffney explaining that it was a distinct possibility since there is "a lot of anti-establishment, anti-incumbent sentiment" in that state, calling that race "a crap-shoot." This caused Matthews to wonder, if in fact, that attitude extended to Pennsylvania as he asked Gaffney the following question: