Losing Chris Matthews on the “spending” bill:

MATTHEWS: It‘s always that scurrilous voice. Anyway, thank you.
Thank you, Steve McMahon. Thank you, Todd Harris.
Let‘s go to Chuck Todd, who is at the White House. What is the plan now? It seems like a bit of this, a bit of that, a little stick, a little carrot. How‘s the president on this, Chuck?
CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, let‘s be straight forward about this. You would love this. It‘s a simple problem that the White House believes they may have; and that is, this bill stopped becoming a debate about how many jobs is it going to create, and suddenly has been turned into a spending bill.
You just showed that ad that the Republicans are running—granted, that ad really hardly ran—I think it ran one time at 3:00 in the morning in Las Vegas. So they can say they technically ran it. But the point is, I‘ve talked to Democrats who privately admit the Republicans have won the spin war here. They‘re calling it a spending bill, not a stimulus bill. They‘re calling—it‘s not being called a jobs bill.
So today, I heard Robert Gibbs come out very forcefully to make a new argument—actually, it‘s the same argument for the stimulus bill. Reiterating the jobs portion of this thing. And I think that, in many ways, it is possible that things have gotten lost as we have debated the idea of the bail outs and all this, that the president—I think that‘s why these Congressional Democrats have been dragged over here tonight, to have another conversation on how to strategize this thing. They have lost the core message of what this bill was supposed to be about.
MATTHEWS: You know, when you buy a bag of candies, a bag of M&Ms, you know that everything in there is M&Ms. As an example, this stimulus package, nobody knows what‘s in there. There‘s a little of this, a little of that, little of this thing. We‘re finding out little things about Hollywood. We‘re finding out something about condoms.
Why didn‘t they put together a package with clear labels on say four or five categories of spending and tax cuts that everybody could sell, building bridges, broadband, education? Something where they could defend each portion of it. They didn‘t do that, did they?
TODD: Well, the argument that the White House will make is hey, 99 percent of this thing is that. But the Republicans have picked out the one percent that‘s this spending. But Claire McCaskill, Democratic senator from Missouri, she gave an interview on Friday night where she said, you know what, the House loaded it up. House Democrats created too many targets, too many easy political targets for the Republicans.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
TODD: I think that‘s what you are going to see. Look, the fact is the John Testers of the world, Claire McCaskills, these sort of populist Democrats in the Senate, they‘re going to team up with the Republicans here and they‘re probably going to get rid of a lot of this, what is seen by some as maybe good programs, but don‘t vote on it now. Let‘s just go stick with straight stimulus.
MATTHEWS: I think we need a transparent package where you have identifiable this, this, this and this. Everybody sees what it is and how it‘s going to create an economic recovery. Or else there will be a problem. Thank you, Chuck Todd, at the White House.
Up next, is President Obama looking to name Republican Senator Judd Gregg to the Commerce secretary job? And what will happen to that seat of his? It looks like it is going to stay Republican for a couple of years, but then probably roll Democrat with the rest of that region. This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.