The 2010 midterm elections helped sequestration come to fruition, says msnbc host Chris Hayes.
“I see it as a kind of legacy inheritance from an old electorate,” Hayes told fellow host Alex Witt. “The 2010 electorate that elected the House of Representatives was a much more conservative, a much older, in terms of years, demographically and much whiter electorate than the 2008 or the 2012 electorate. That was the high-point of anti-Obama backlash.”
He said the Tea Party produced a House of Representatives that gerrymandered districts to essentially lock-in a quasi-permanent Republican majority in the House.
“So what has happened is the moment in which the public was most plausibly behind a program of austerity and cuts and imposed pain, which is what this is about, has passed. And yet it is carried forward through this kind of trick of the Budget Control Act and the debt ceiling deal and all these strait jackets that have been put onto the process.”
After over a year and a half of hosting the weekend show Up, Hayes is now moving on to primetime, with a new 8 p.m. weekday show. When asked about the choice of Steve Kornacki as his replacement on the panel discussion show Up, Hayes was effusive.
“He’s a total mensch,” Hayes said of Kornacki. “He’s got this wonderful generosity about him.”
Last summer Kornacki was made co-host of The Cycle, a 3 p.m. political show on msnbc. Kornacki will take over when Hayes moves to his new time slot. Hayes said his new show will be about conversation and bringing in new voices about curiosity, rigor and socialness. “The thing I’m passionate about is figuring the world out, and thinking through it and talking through it with people so that’s what we’re going to do on the show.” Hayes’s new show starts at 8 p.m. on April 1.
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