Matthew Dowd Gets His Corrupt Duopoly Bonus

Many, many very smart and luxurious people on the internet have come up to me and asked how Matthew "'Republican'? Moi?  Perish the thought!  I'm an Independent!  Just look at my LinkedIn page!" Dowd can possibly keep body and soul together if his only job is occasionally going on "This Week...With Whoever Drew The Short Straw" and robotically repeating the same, laughably idiotic Both Siderist claptrap he has been repeating, rain or shine, for years.  

And I tell these very, very smart internet people -- thousands of them, really. or maybe tens of thousands because who can count because there are so many and all so tremendously smart and also patriotic, very, very patriotic -- that, first, teevee not only pays enough even dum-dums like Dowd enough to live like a king in Des Moines or Paducha, but your face on teevee also gooses up your scale everywhere else you go to sell your shitburgers.  

And, second, Matthew Dowd does not just appear occasionally on teevee to repeat the same, laughably idiotic Both Siderist claptrap he has been repeating, rain or shine, for years.  He also writes down this laughably idiotic Both Siderist claptrap and then ABC "publishes" it.

Living the dream!

And as we have already established using the rock-solid "random cabdriver told me" method that is apparently sufficient for every other political journalist in America, every time a Both Siderist hack publicly uses the phrase "corrupt duopoly", Michael Bloomberg pays them $115.

A random cabdriver told me that every time Ron Fournier uses the phrase "corrupt duopoly", Michael Bloomberg pays him $115.

So imagine my complete lack of surprise when I opened up the ABC "news" feed to find this...

Just Over a Month Out from Election Day: Matt's Magnificent Seven

By MATTHEW DOWD Oct 7, 2016, 11:52 AM ET

1. For the first time ever in a presidential race we have two major-party candidates disliked and distrusted by a majority of the country. This has never happened before. It has made for an ugly conversation and will also make for an even bigger problem on Nov. 9 when there is no mandate for whoever wins. In the aftermath of this election, the level of disgust with the political party duopoly will only grow, and we will see a rise of independents for local offices...

...

Hide the silver and bury the kids, Maude, it's the K'rrupt Duopoly!

The problem with Mr. Dowd's Both Siderism is that it is so bluntly dumb and amateurish that any novice armed with the most basic set of tools can disassemble it in moments.

For example, for all of his concern about the ugliness of this election One Both Sides equating to "no mandate for whoever wins"the fperhaps Mr. Dowd can enlighten up as to the last time Republican party honored the idea that a popularly elected Democratic president gets to govern with the mandate they earned?  Wasn't Clinton.  Sure as shit wasn't Obama.

Also as Mr. Down damn well knows, each candidate's relative popularity did not occur in a vacuum and does not represent some innate, immovable characteristic.   

For example, Donald Trump is unpopular because he is an openly lying, racist fire demon.  He's fucking pig, beloved by the GOP base because they are pigs as well. 

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, just a few years ago, was hella popular both as a senator and as Secretary of State.   As Salon notes ("We don’t have “two historically unpopular candidates”: What the media gets wrong about candidate popularity"):

As a public servant before this election cycle, Hillary Clinton registered broad public approval. From April 2010 through May 2011, her approval rating averaged more than 60 percent, as aggregated by HuffPost Pollster. Her disapproval rating was never above 35 percent. In fact, throughout her tenure in President Barack Obama’s cabinet, her negatives remained below that level, while her positive numbers never fell below 56 percent. Her popularity was both high and steady, especially compared with Obama’s sharp drop-off early in his first term as president, as he faced increasingly intransigent GOP opposition.

In a telling snapshot, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll as Clinton left secretary of state post in January 2013 found her approval rating at 69 percent, “higher than any other outgoing secretary of state measured in a survey since 1948 — with one exception: Colin Powell, whose approval rating was at 77 percent per a late 2004 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll.” That’s hardly the sign of an unpopular political figure. Unsurprisingly, 92 percent of Democrats approved of Clinton’s performance — but so did 64 percent of registered independents and even 41 percent of Republicans.

Two months later, Business Insider ran a story headlined ”Republicans Secretly Think Hillary Clinton Will Crush Them In 2016″...

So what happened?

The GOP Hate Machine firing on all cylinders happened (Salon again):

As the chart below shows, her popularity fell as a consequence of entering into the highly polarized process of a presidential campaign, beginning just as these stories came out in early 2013. That was when the GOP began shifting the focus of its attacks against her — via multiple fruitless Benghazi investigations, for example — but that did not succeed in bringing her down into negative territory until mid-2015...

It is the same, old, shitty playbook we have all seen a 100 times before.  GOP dementors inside the government wildly abusing their offices to run one, baseless back-to-back witch-hunts, plus wall-to-wall "Hillary Is A Monster" coverage from every precinct of Hate Media, plus compliant shitbags like Matthew Dowd in the "legitimate" media who's career depends entirely on maintaining the Beltway's Big Both Siderist Lie.  

Rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat until you have made a race out of what should be a rout.  

Well at least Mr. Dowd gets his Corrupt Duopoly bonus, which means he won't be hurting for beer money this weekend.  A good thing too, because it looks like he's going to need it.