There were a couple of threads about MSNBC in the last couple of days. In one,
ctkeith said: "MSNBC management are the dumbest people on earth. If they went way to the Left and made themselves the anti-fox they would double their audience." (He got 12 ratings for that: all 4s.)
Well, they haven't gone way to the left yet, but they're certainly creating an ambience that's comfortable for Democrats.
I just watched today's Hardball. They had one segment with a guy from the Kerry and from the Bush campaigns, and then two women on to talk about Laura Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry as (potential) first ladies. During the first segment, the Kerry guy didn't have to do anything. First Tweety asked the Bush guy why Bush said that Kerry said he would have voted for the war given what he knows now, when he must know that that isn't what Kerry said; then Matthews kept asking the Bush guy why they put Laura out there with the pessimistic message about stem-cell research, when America is full of people caring after parents with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, or who are waiting to get diabeties, since their parents had it.
In the second segment, both guests said that Teresa would make a better first lady (one said she would change the role more than Hillary did), and Matthews said that he didn't really know Laura, but had met Teresa lots of times (Tweety swoons).
I've been getting the feeling for some time that MSNBC wants to stay ahead of the curve relative to the other cable news channels with respect to how Bush and Kerry are going to be perceived in the not to distant future.