On the Monday before Super Tuesday, longtime MSNBC host Chris Matthews came on the air and promptly, tartly announced he was retiring, that "tonight will be my last 'Hardball.'" His language and tone strongly implied he was being pushed out.

Politically, it felt like part of a pattern. At the same time that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar suddenly dropped out of the race in an apparent attempt to solidify the anti-Bernie Sanders vote, MSNBC was acting in the opposite direction, shedding a host that had become a liability with the Sanders socialists, who are a decent chunk of the MSNBC audience.

The host's insensitivity to women on the set played a part, but the offenses were verbal. He wasn't accused of sexual assault (Matt Lauer) or a "crusty paw" and exhibitionism (Charlie Rose). He was accused of saying things that made women uncomfortable, like "why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?" That's not a smart way for a married man to talk, but it doesn't compare with more malignant, more physical abusers.

The larger part of this is Matthews falling out of step with the Democratic Party's lunge to the left in the Trump era. The MSNBC star reacted badly by comparing the Sanders victory in Nevada to the fall of France to the Nazis during World War II. He also ripped into Sanders for lauding Fidel Castro's literacy programs.

"I have an attitude towards Castro," Matthews announced. "I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed."

That's not just out of step with today's left. Anyone who's watched the American media from the Bay of Pigs forward knows that top journalists from Barbara Walters to Dan Rather to Katie Couric have sounded just like Sanders in hailing Castro's alleged "workers paradise" with literacy programs and "free health care" and "one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world."