The Dow Jones industrial surged to a new high on Tuesday, closing at a level not seen since before the financial meltdown. The Dow, which serves as a popular gauge of the stock market, rose to 14,253.77 -- that's up from the previous record of 14,164 set on Oct. 9, 2007.
When the market has been down in the dumps, and it certainly has been in the past few years, critics on Wall Street have been quick to blame President Obama.
msnbc's Lawrence O'Donnell called out this "cold-blooded" group of TV pundits, who are "completely lost" when "talking about anything that occurs outside of lower Manhattan, especially anything that happens inside of Washington." He argued, "They've always believed electing a Democratic president would be bad for the stock market and electing a Republican president would be good for the stock market and good for them even though there is absolutely no evidence of that and plenty of evidence to the contrary," such as during Clinton's presidency when "the stock market and the economy soared."
O'Donnell admitted, "I'm not smart enough to tell you why the market goes up and down. I have never once said that the market went up today because of X or the market went down today because of Y." But, he urged others to be wary of "those guys on TV who tell you why the markets went up and down."
The Last Word host said he would neither blame nor thank President Obama for the Dow's performance. "Some would say Mitt Romney is richer tonight thanks to President Obama--but I'm not one of those people. I'm not going to give President Obama credit for the stock market going up on his watch, and I'm not going to blame him on days when it goes down."