Tonight MSNBC will again install Rachel Maddow in the anchor chair along with Brian Williams to head up their impartial “hard news” coverage of the New Hampshire primaries. Why is a partisan opinionizer anchoring a live news event? For the same reason she hosted a debate: she is MSNBC’s most watched property. But aside from the obvious journalistic issues this raises, there’s another problem—the audience.

We’ve read a lot from people hyping Trump about how brilliantly he’s dividing the Fox audience, beating Ailes at his own game, and so forth. But our elite media journalists have been careful to say nothing about Bernie Sanders, who is proving more adept at dividing audiences than Trump. Case in point: Monday’s Rachel Maddow Show, the closest thing to a 60-minute infomercial for Hillary Clinton you’re likely to see all week. Much of the show was given over to a genteel, cozy interview with Ms. Clinton, one in which snarky Maddow transformed into a sort of political Dr. Phil, tip-toeing over the most contentious issues and avoiding anxiety at all costs.

If you think the Sanders supporters haven’t noticed what Maddow’s been up to, you are wrong. Check out some of these comments from the Democratic Underground:

• Practically the ENTIRE Rachel Maddow Show was spent either discussing, showcasing or… interviewing Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the eve of the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Primary Election? It was in a word… UNBELIEVABLE!
• She let Hillary lash out at Bernie and did not even have a Bernie surrogate on to respond to those attacks. That’s not journalism. That’s pure crap. The nite before NH no less.
• Why would anyone throw away half of their own audience like that? Bye bye to her and her show.
• Rachel did a one-on -one with HRH right before Iowa too. Their shilling is really doing a lot of good, eh?
• I thought at first that it was a paid political ad. Way to go, Rachel!

Rachel hasn’t been faring much better on twitter:
The Cable Gamer is struck by how little attention this viewer revolt is getting compared to the oohing and ahhhing over Trump, allegedly on the verge of wreaking havoc on Fox News. Of course, the dirty little secret is how little this will matter to ratings. Rabidly partisan viewers get upset during elections, but rarely stay away forever, if at all. Fox News hasn’t been destroyed; it’s as strong as ever. Trump didn’t beat Ailes at his own game: Ailes beat Trump. And those irate MSNBC viewers will eventually forgive Rachel for her apostasy when they’ve calmed down.

What this does underline is MSNBC’s twisted notion that its “hard news” coverage must include opinionizers in the anchor chairs. That is indicative of how spurious this “rebranding” of MSNBC into a channel that does “hard news” really is. No serious news viewer is going to accept someone who has all but joined the Hillary campaign as an impartial news anchor covering her election. And neither will those Bernie supporters.

Appendix: The tweets pictured above:

A debate moderator hugs the candidates—not something you see every day. Hence Rachel Maddow’s dual embraces of Hillary and Bernie became the lead story emerging from MSNBC’s debate. For that reason alone it was a bad move; a good debate should generate headlines about newsworthy content. When the headline is a controversy over your talent crossing the line, nobody benefits, except maybe rival networks who will make hay out of it.

Maddow’s very presence at the debate was controversial—opinionizers don’t usually get to play impartial journalists on TV, though it’s not exactly unheard of at MSNBC. Her questioning, like that of the presumptively impartial Chuck Todd, was satisfactory as far as it went. But there were many issues that went unaddressed. Hillary had just doubled down on the “vast right-wing conspiracy” meme, a phrase that was created to suggest that women were lying about poor misunderstood Bill. Yet this was unmentioned. Ms. Clinton’s biggest electoral liability may be her disastrous “honest and trustworthy” polling, but that issue got extremely short shrift. The Russian reset, Assad the reformer, and several other foreign policy issues dicey for Ms. Clinton did not make the cut.

Questioning on unsecured emails looked the other way regarding the human assets compromised, instead focusing on speculation about what the FBI would do. This is literally unknowable by Hillary Clinton, yet that’s what she was asked. Ms. Maddow raised the Flint water situation and several references to the governor of Michigan (a Republican) were strategically dropped. But the candidates were not asked about the EPA, the one agency involved in this mess a President would have some control over.

To be fair there were also some solid, substantive exchanges; we even found the slightly tedious discourse over who is or isn’t a “progressive” to have merit. But missed opportunities like those outlined above are what people are going to look at when you install an opinionizer friendly to the debaters as co-host. And so it is that, when Rachel Maddow engulfed the two potential Presidents in big, friendly embraces, it was like she was hugging a pair of Vermont Teddy Bears while wearing her favorite Pajamagram.

Friday night Megyn Kelly told Howard Kurtz she didn’t have a problem with opinionizers moderating debates, citing the precedent of Hugh Hewitt on CNN. However the situations are not comparable. MSNBC wanted Maddow to be a moderator because she is their most-watched program host. But Hewitt was foisted on CNN. Republicans had insisted that CNN place a bonafide conservative somewhere on the questioning panel, and the network caved. (The GOP tried that with Fox News, only FNC didn’t capitulate.) So CNN signed a co-sponsorship deal with Salem Broadcasting that made their star Hewitt a questioner—just as questions from youtube are part of the deal when you co-sponsor a debate with Google. As it turned out CNN marginalized Hewitt (who was not a host or a moderator but on a panel off to the side with Dana Bash) to the point where some viewers forgot he was there. Still, even with extremely limited air time, he managed to have a moment analogous to the Maddow hug. Mr. Hewitt was so pleased at the response to one of his questions that he actually applauded the candidate’s answer—on camera!

There’s a way for MSNBC to avoid these sorts of embarrassments. If Maddow must be a moderator, then make the debate a special edition of The Rachel Maddow Show, not a production of MSNBC’s news department. Do something like that any time you want an opinion host to moderate, and no one will care if the host hugs the candidates, applauds their answers, or invites them out for drinks. If MSNBC’s “hard news” division wants to do a debate, then keep the opinion hosts out of it. Leave the journalism to NBC journalists—Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell, etc. The Cable Gamer may have issues with some of these people, but at least their job description directs them to be fair and impartial. When you bring opinionizers into a debate, you are expecting them to keep a promise they never made.