Journalist Rachel Maddow knows a thing or two about the media. Not only does she have her own show on Air America, but the 34-year old political junkie also appears regularly on MSNBC. And, as you'll see in the video above, she's not a wallflower.

Our editor recently sat down with Maddow to talk about the Hillary Clinton New Hampshire scandal, why we need to talk about race and how she embarrassed herself in front of Keith Olbermann…

Andrew Belonsky: I want to start with the Chris Matthews/Hillary Clinton brouhaha. As you pointed out on MSNBC, Talking Points Memo was talking about how women voted for Hillary in New Hampshire because Chris Matthews and other male news personalities were picking on her. Do you think that's valid? Do you think that people really are swayed so easily?

Rachel Maddow: I don't. Certainly there's no statistical evidence to support that that's why people unexpectedly voted for Hillary Clinton, but there's not that much of an explanation for why Hillary Clinton defied the last two days of polling. She was ahead in New Hampshire all year - the last four days of polling for Obama were very strong, but she had been leading all year. If you actually look at the exit polls and the people who voted for her, it wasn't people who decided the last day or the last couple of days. The people who turned out and voted for Clinton had decided, like 50% or something, had decided more than a month ago that they were going to vote for her. What made the difference is that they turned out in huge numbers. Now, could we emotionally explain that turnout as being mad at the media? Maybe. That's what political analysis is: putting an emotional frame for which we don't have facts.

AB: Really? You think emotion is inherent in political analysis?

RM: I think that political analysis is taking observable facts and working them into a story that makes sense to people and sticks with people. Making things into a story requires understanding people's emotions- you not only play into people's emotions, but you incorporate them. That leads to how you tell the story. I said that on MSNBC, because I was feeling it. I mean, I'm not a Hillary Clinton fan, but the last few days of coverage of her - once those Obama polls were coming out, there was almost glee from the 95% male newscasters. Their palatable excitement about how she was going to lose was gross. That's the only thing that has ever made me feel sympathetic for Hillary. That clip that we all saw of her being emotional at that campaign appearance, I think it was a genuinely affecting moment for more than half the people that saw that tape, but yet more than half the time it was presented in the media, there was cynical, nasty, joy in her pain. There were white guy journalists being like, "Ha! Look at the bitch crying" or "She's obviously faking this just to dupe stupid women voters". The consistent mean in the media was infuriating. I felt it and I was seeing it everywhere in the blog world.

AB: I was talking to Mary Breslauer recently and we spoke about how the lines are breaking down between media and political personalities. They're almost becoming one and the same. The definition of a politician is not necessarily someone who is elected to office. Do you think that the media has gained too much power - particularly with regard to the elections - but in shaping the zeitgeist?

RM: Well, the media has always been tremendously powerful. In historical context, it isn't new that the media is shaping how we view people, but I think what's happening right now is that we have newsish entertainment. We have people who are political operatives who dress up like news anchors and talk about really important political stories with some authority that they have not earned through journalistic credentials. That's not to say that those folks shouldn't be on tv - that's not to say that I shouldn't be on tv - I think there's a love for punditry in political analysis, which is to take facts and make them understandable and help put a context and an emotional frame on what we're seeing, so more people are compelled by the politics of the moment. It's an important role and it's actually, I think, a civically honorable role.

AB: I'm not sure everyone would agree with you, but I certainly do.

RM: What happens sometimes - and I think you saw this with Chris Matthews - the media tends to bandwagon. The higher the ratio of analysis to - you know, seeing five hours of cable new coverage to every AP story with one fact is a totally normal day in political news - the higher the ratio of analysis, the more likely is that the people talking about that fact are going to get on some stupid bandwagon and they're all going to say the same thing and they're all going to make the same point. Because it's all white guys who are all beltway guys - the whole pundit corp is so homogenous - occasionally, especially when you're talking about minority candidates and female candidates, their band wagon story is wrong.

Mary Breslauer didn't always want to be a politico. The New Jersey-born brainiac actually got her start in journalism, but eventually found herself working for the late Gerry Studds, a Congressman who found himself censured after having a consensual, legal sexual relationship with a congressional page.

Breslauer's experience with Studds sent her on a collision course with American politics. Now a co-host for HRC's The Agenda radio show, Breslauser's spending her free time campaigning for Senator Hillary Clinton.

Below the journo-politico talks our editor through her evolution, discusses Studds and explains why Hillary should lead our country.

Andrew Belonsky: Hi, Mary! Are you having a nice day?

Mary Breslauer: Yeah. It's been okay. It's kind of a neutral day.

AB: Neutral?

MB: I meant to go to the gym. I didn't get to the gym. I was like, "It's 4:30. You're talking to Andrew. You're not going to the gym." But there's always another day!

AB: Let's hope so. Alright, we're going to dive right into this. How did you get into politics?

MB: Well, I started in journalism in college: I was editor of my college newspaper. Whenever you spend any time in journalism, I think it by nature turns you into a political person - or, at least, a political junkie. It certainly did for me! And then I made the switch from journalism to what some call "the dark side."

[Laughs]

MB: One of my first jobs was press secretary in Gerry Studds' 1984 reelection campaign immediately [after] his censure. So, that really was just a wonderful baptism by fire into politics! The campaign was completely unprecedented. No one had ever cared about that little Massachusetts district. Then we were flooded not just with national media, but international media.

AB: Were you recruited into that campaign? How did you end up getting involved?

MB: It's funny. I ended living on Martha's Vineyard for ten years in my twenties. I was a reporter and managing editor of The Vineyard Gazette, which is the weekly newspaper for the island. Gerry was our congressman, so I got to know him quite well. When the '84 election came up, just after the censure - I had wanted to make the switch. It was actually my girlfriend at the time who said, "You should call Studds, because this is going to be a big race and he needs help." So, I called him and within 24 hours I was his press secretary.

AB: How do you go into that situation? How do handle you scandal of that nature? I understand he didn't do anything illegal, but it must have been a challenge.

MB: The challenge of it really was that reporters - unless they were local reporters - didn't understand the unique relationship Gerry had with his constituents. Gerry immediately went after the censure and had town meetings throughout the district. He was available to people. Nobody held town meetings until Gerry Studds did. He did it many years before the censure ever happened, so people in the district really had an incredible relationship with him. In the end, he won the primary challenge, which was quite tough, and won the general resoundingly. And he was reelected and never challenged until he retired. Many voters attitudes were as if he were a member of the family. You might say, "Gee, I wish that never happened, but you're one of us."

AB: Is that happened with the Clintons? Obviously Bill and Hillary have been plagued by scandal in the past…

MB: You know, I think the Clintons - a lot of people are turned off by the scandal allegations. But unless you were a true Clinton hater, I think people just said, "Enough is enough".