The Ongoing Adventures of the Fundamentally Ridiculous Matthew Dowd

Every now and then, as an act of civic hygiene, I like to check in with  ABC News' former chief political analyst Matthew Dowd to find out what hugely inconvenient parts of his past he is whitewashing today.  

For example, if an unsuspecting citizen were to happen across this Tweet by Mr. Dowd --

And when other news organizations accommodate the lies and misinformation by presenting two sides to every conversation, then they also contribute to the demise of our democracy. https://t.co/oCx4b83b0Z

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) February 17, 2023

-- they might mistake Mr. Dowd for an honest broker of opinions who has looked at the American political media and come away disgusted with its toxic, reflexive Both Siderism.

Such a citizen would have no idea that not so very long ago, back when it might have made a difference, during the 2016 presidential election and well into the Trump administration, Matthew Dowd (who was then ABC News' chief political analyst) and his running buddy Ron Fournier were the undisputed kings of toxic, reflexive Both Siderism.

He was very proactive about it, using his position as ABC News' chief political analyst to slag lil old me -- a nobody blogger from the middle of middle America -- for calling him out on it, calling my readers stupid for taking my side, and aggressively advocating for Disrupting the K'rupy Duopoly by voting third party in the 2016 election.

Then Trump won and everything went tits up.  

It'd be nice to believe that Dowd then saw the error of his ways and sought to make amends, but that's not what happened.  Instead,  ABC News' chief political analyst Matthew Dowd went radio silent on the subject and started automatically blocking anyone who even lightly brushed up against his extremely well-documented past, toxic Both Siderism.

Then he and ABC News parted company.

Then he deleted his entire Twitter archive of Both Siderist filth.

Then he apparently leaned on his friend from the George W. Bush days, Nicolle Wallace, to get him in at MSNBC.  And she did, because MSNBC is now the Bush Regime Dead-Ender Full Employment Project.  And just like *that* Matthew Dowd version 3.0 was introduced to MSNBC audiences as the Righteous Scourge of Journalistic Both Siderism.  

No apologies.  No amends.  Because, you see, it's just a show.  Just an entertainment.  And so, hurryupquick, there was a set change, costume change and script change and Dowd was back on camera playing an entirely different character than the one he had played at this last teevee gig just a few years before.

And I say Matthew Dowd 3.0, because Dowd 2.0 was the guy on ABC News pushing the Both Sides Do It lie like his life depended on it.  And Dowd 1.0?  Well he was the architect of George W. Bush's filthy 2004 re-election campaign that targeted gay marriages.

Except Mr. Dowd's has the large, industrial size whitewash bucket, and after whitewashing Dowd 2.0 out of existence, there's still plenty left to -- 

Ummm, you might get your facts straight. First, I had no involvement with that effort done and thought it was ridiculous. Second, it had no effect on results in those states. That is a myth.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) February 17, 2023

 -- whitewash the equally inconvenient Dowd 1.0 out of existence as well.

Except (from Salon in 2007):

Matthew Dowd's not-so-miraculous conversion

...

Bush's loss of the popular majority by 543,895 votes in the 2000 election was a shock to his political advisors and prompted an internal rethinking of his strategy. During the Florida contest and before the Supreme Court delivered the presidency to Bush, Dowd wrote a confidential memo to Rove that analyzed data from the recent vote and argued that there was no significant center in the electorate. "Dowd's analysis destroyed the rationale for Bush to govern as 'a uniter, not a divider,'" wrote Thomas Edsall in his book "Building Red America." Bush's confected campaign persona as a "compassionate conservative" was suddenly discarded. The "architect," as Bush called Rove, had an architect. Bush's brain had an outsourced brain. Rove's and Bush's radical imperatives derived from Dowd's conclusions.

With Bush as president, Dowd was put on the Republican National Committee payroll and became an intimate participant in White House strategy sessions. Bush and the Republicans now exploited divisive wedge issues and tactics with a vengeance. After Sept. 11, 2001, fear was bundled with loathing, the terrorist threat from abroad conflated with the gay menace within. By 2004, relying on Dowd's numbers, Republicans made gay marriage the most salient social issue, exceeding abortion and gun control in its inflammatory potential to mobilize conservatives. Dowd prescribed the strategy for targeting of Republican base voters' "anger points," as GOP consultants called them, for maximum turnout.

The "war on terror" was the glue that held the Bush message together. In the political rinse cycle, Dowd transformed the disinformation justifying the Iraq war into platitudinous Republican talking points. In the interviews he granted, Dowd repeated them effortlessly. "Events in Iraq," he told National Public Radio during the Republican Convention in September 2004, "and removing Saddam Hussein is all part of the war on terror. You can't separate out removing a brutal dictator from a place that harbored terrorists from the war on terror." One plus one equals three; the clock struck 13. 

 

Dowd packaged his vicious tactics as nothing more than the application of basic advertising technique. His slicing and dicing of wedge issues was no such thing, he explained. He was, he said, just creating a new Republican "brand." After Rove executed Dowd's carefully calculated targeting to produce Bush's narrow victory in 2004, Dowd was triumphant. "Issues don't matter in presidential campaigns," he exulted in 2005, "it's your brand values that matter." For Dowd, facts didn't matter either, only "brand" identity...

When watching cable teevee, I find it helpful to remind myself that I am no way, no how watching news.  Sometimes a little actual news leaks in, but what I am watching are produced teevee entertainment that resemble news, very much like Gunsmoke or Have Gun, Will Travel were produced radio and teevee entertainments resembling the American west during the post-Civil War 1870s.  

And goofs like Matthew Dowd are basically character actors who are hired to play various parts on various shows.  Like Royal Dano or John Dehner.

The difference being that Dano -- who acted in 198 teevee shows and movies, and who provided the voice for Disney's audioanimatronic Abraham Lincoln in "Great Moments with Mister Lincoln" -- never tried to convince people IRL that he actually was Abraham Lincoln.

Where Dowd continues to pretend that he really is Dowd 3.0, and always has been, and that the shameful roles he played in the past somehow never happened.  

 

No Fair Remembering Stuff