Meet Barbara Buono (D CAND, NJ-GOV). Or, as MSNBC called her: “Dawn Quixote.”

Ain’t Chris Matthews the total ass, Ms. Buono?

Barbara Buono, known more widely as the woman Democrats put forward to run against Chris Christie after Cory Booker took a pass, is asked her first question early, before the cameras go live and the set falls silent for the countdown to air. The state senator is in Hardball‘s Washington studio for a national television interview — her third-ever — and a rare chance to get her name on the screen and into the living rooms of Chris Matthews’ tens of thousands of MSNBC viewers.

But first — before any talk about New Jersey, where Buono has experience two-decades-deep in the state legislature — a query from the cable news vet, as she later recalled it:

“Can I say you’re attractive?” Matthews asks.

“No, you can’t,” Buono remembers responding.

She slogged to Washington for this?

Pretty much, Ms. Buono.  You’re the designated sacrificial victim in this year’s New Jersey gubernatorial race, remember?  Surely somebody mentioned this to you.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

PS: I have two feelings warring in my breast: a certain detached sympathy for the level of betrayal this represents; and a certain partisan instinct to give Ms. Buono a good kicking while she’s down on general principles.  I think I’ll just give one snicker and then piously tut-tut, while averting my eyes.

PPS: By the way… Ms. Buono should have ripped out Chris Matthews’ liver and made him eat it.  That she did failed to do so was not a fatal mistake for her candidacy only because the quiet consensus seems to be that Buono’s fatal mistake was in running in the first place.

PPPS: Seriously, watch that video over at Hot Air.  Matthews didn’t exactly eviscerate Buono; he merely did the political equivalent of a surprise attack that ended with a stiletto in the kidney. This would have been infuriating, if I actually liked the target; as it is, it’s like watching a particularly taboo-pushing stand-up comedian.  You can’t quite believe that he actually said those things…