Under En-Dowd

By Ann Coulter To celebrate Donald Trumps inauguration this week Im returning to my new favorite parlor game: quoting Republican consultants on the 2016 campaign. It never gets old! Also this exercise reminds us of the many things we are thankful for this week: Donald Trump the cluelessness of his opponents and Nexis transcripts. Our featured GOP consultant this week is Matthew Dowd chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign and modern-day Mr. Magoo. Nominally a conservative in a liberal business Dowd couldnt pull off a full Arianna so if he wanted to sit in a warm studio on Sunday mornings issuing pronouncements as if from Mount Olympus he had to come up with an act. Even a guy like Dowd -- wrong on everything else from the time of day to whether its raining -- accurately sussed out what the media wanted: a non-conservative playing the conservative. How else to explain the fact that the entire American media refused to have on anyone who supported the man who just won a landslide presidential election? The territory Dowd carved out for himself was: patriotic sage above partisanship announcing on every subject that both sides were wrong he alone was right. This made him a regular panelist on ABCs This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Dowds both sides are wrong offering to the one-party church was condescending and tiresome but it would help if he were from time to time correct. Instead from the moment Trump announced Dowd treated us to hilariously boneheaded prognostications that were instantly proved wrong and never acknowledged as he issued each successive boneheaded prediction. On Feb. 7 2016 Dowd pronounced that the nominations would be wrapped up in April for the Democrats and May for the Republicans." Trump won the nomination by May 4 and Hillary won it in June -- two months after Dowds confident prediction. On April 3 Dowd said Trump cant win a general election for all intents and purposes. (For all intents and purposes is what consultants add to nothing-burger statements to make them sound weighty.) Trump won the election -- and he won it with far more electoral votes than Dowds candidate ever got. On May 1 Dowd said Its going to be a men-versus-women election unfortunately." Trump won both white men and white women decisively. White women without a college degree carried the Midwest for Trump. (See fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women.) Dowd spent several Sundays in May assuring viewers that a third-party candidate would be on stage at the debates: I think there is likely to be somebody else standing in the debates and that changes the dynamics." That never happened. After Trump wrapped up the nomination Dowd claimed he had predicted it! Well I was very bullish on Donald Trump in the primaries he said on May 8. His use of the term bullish was well half-right. As for Trump winning the general election Dowd declared it unlikely. (Based on his fantastical recollections of his own predictions I assume he is currently claiming to have predicted Trumps win in the general election.) In the week leading up to the election Dowd was a whirling dervish of soothsaying on Twitter: NOVEMBER 1 @matthewjdowd Any expenditure of time or money by Trump in PA VA MI and NH is a total waste. Campaign mismanagement if they keep it up." Of the four states Dowd considered a total waste for Trump to campaign in he won the two biggest worth more than twice as many electoral votes as the other two combined -- and one of those he lost by only 0.3 percent. NOVEMBER 2 @matthewjdowd clinton has a better chance of carrying Arizona than trump does of carrying Mi or Wi" Trump carried both Michigan and Wisconsin. Hillary did not win Arizona. NOVEMBER 4 @matthewjdowd Look for sure signs Trump will lose: 1. The only poll that matters is election day 2. Our vote doesnt show up in polls. 3. Truman Although Trump never made any excuses -- he won! -- all three of those statements turned out to be true. (See Time magazines Madam President issue.) NOVEMBER 5 was Dowds Latino Appreciation Day: @matthewjdowd even if Trump gets the exact of votes of whites blacks & Asians as Bush in 2004 Trump would lose by 3 million votes due to Latinos." @matthewjdowd Trump will lose latino voters by a larger margin than romney. Who set a new modern low." @matthewjdowd It looks like Trump campaign was right the silent hidden vote is showing up: Latinos are voting at record levels. Motivated by Trump." Trump won more of the Hispanic vote than either McCain or Romney -- and probably more than Bush for whom we only have nonsense numbers (as both Republican and Democratic analysts agree -- see city-journal.org/html/hispanic-voting-myths-13054.html and alternet.org/story/20606/44_percent_of_hispanics_voted_for_bush). NOVEMBER 6 @matthewjdowd If trump loses Ohio and Florida one reason is that Clinton campaign head faked them into thinking he had chance in Michigan. & media helped" Trump won Michigan. Also Ohio and Florida. On Nov. 6 -- 48 hours before the election -- Dowd announced on ABCs This Week that Trump would lose and lose badly. Bored with his own omniscience Dowd explained George to me this election has been ... incredibly predictable actually from the primary." Mr. Magoo had more wisdom to impart: On election night Hillary Clintons margins among nonwhite voters and among college-educated voters are going to be the highest margins weve ever seen." Dowds sweeping declarations turned out to be less accurate than a blindfolded monkey throwing darts in a bar. On Twitter Dowd assured his readers: NOVEMBER 7 @matthewjdowd Clinton wins by five points. Over 300 electoral votes. Trump loses by more popular votes than Romney." Final electoral vote: Trump 304; Clinton 227. TV bookers couldnt get enough of Dowd. What smugness! What monumental cluelessness! ABCs This Week is a show famous for confronting guests with their own prior statements. Would ABC play this game with its own Powerhouse Roundtable prognosticators? Surely a man of Dowds integrity would come on the air and admit I couldnt have been more wrong!" HELLO! That didnt happen at all! Dowd was allowed to sit out the Sunday after the election. The following Sunday he was in his usual seat on the Powerhouse Roundtable right back to giving his sweeping grinning predictions with no acknowledgment that he had been spectacularly -- and characteristically -- wrong in every prediction hed made all year long. Thats why Dowd is our modern-day Mr. Magoo. As Trump is being sworn in and visions of the wall are dancing in your head remember that if he ever runs out of bricks he can always use Republican consultants.