Appearing as a guest on MSNBC's Deadline: White House on Wednesday, frequent guest and former ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd delivered his latest anti-Republican ramblings, this time accusing the GOP of not believing in the Constitution while Democrats allegedly do. Ironically, by the end of the segment, Dowd admitted that it is his own anti-Republican side that would need to change the Constitution to get what they want.
As host Nicolle Wallace discussed the push by Republican state legislatures to pass new voting laws, Dowd declared that GOPers "want a tyranny of the minority," and then complained because Republicans are able to block Democratic policies in Congress in spite of Democrats winning the popular vote. He vaguely alluded to discredited polling suggesting that a "supermajority" of the public support liberals on issues like gun control and abortion:
Our democracy is fundamentally failing today when the vast majority of the country wants certain things done, and it's not happening. And this ranges from not only voting rights to, you know, health insurance to gun reform -- anything you could name -- preserving Roe versus Wade -- all of those things are not happening. And that's what a vast -- a supermajority of the country wants. So it's time to say we need to -- instead of saying we need to protect what we have, actually we need to change what we have because what we have is broken. Our democracy is fundamentally broken, and one of the only paths to fixing our democracy is the voting rights legislation.
A bit later, after complaining that Congress is not doing anything about "climate change," he accused Republicans of being "abusers" who do not support the Constitution:
Right now, our politics is like a bad relationship where you don't trust the person, and the person -- the other person across the table of you -- doesn't share the same values, and may even be an abuser, and you can't be in a relationship with that person that's healthy. And that's where we are today with the Democrats versus Republicans. I wish we had two major parties today that we could fundamentally believe in and shared some fundamental values. We don't. And until the Democrats admit the people across the aisle from them do not share the same fundamental values -- do not believe in the same Constitution that they do -- they have to discard all the old ways of doing things and go about this in a brand new way.
But it wasn't long before he agreed with MSNBC contributor and former Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill when she talked up amending the Constitution to radically change the U.S. Senate so that larger states would get more Senators than smaller states:
CLAIR MCCASKILL, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Okay, so we've got to talk about something bigger than the filibuster, then. We've got to talk about amending the Constitution because the only way -- there's no gerrymandering in the Senate. The deal in the Senate is that states that have very low population have the same amount of representation as --
DOWD: Agreed.
MCCASKILL: -- people with big populations.
DOWD: Agreed.
MCCASKILL: So if, in fact, you're talking about changing the bones of our democracy, let's make it clear, the mountain we're about the climb is amending our Constitution. And we would have to move what the Founding Fathers thought were best, which was two Senators from every state. That will have to be done away with to get to the kind of things that you want to do regardless of the filibuster.
As Dowd further agreed with McCaskill's call for changing the Constitution, he concluded his ramblings by claiming that there is a "five-alarm fire" in the country because of Republicans.
This episode of Deadline: White House was sponsored in part by Verizon. Their contact information is linked.
Transcripts follow:
MSNBC
Deadline: White House
August 11, 2021
4:04 p.m. .Eastern
MATTHEW DOWD, FORMER ABC NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: What we've learned -- what I've learned, actually, to my shock, over the last few years and especially over the last 10 months is their (Republicans') strategy is to make sure that the country as a whole doesn't have a voice, right? That is basically their strategy. They want a tyranny of the minority. That is fundamentally what they don't want. And we can go through all of the sociological reasons for that and all of that and the political reasons they want to hold power and all that they fundamentally don't want the voices of all of America to be heard in these rooms. And I think we have to start saying, if our democracy loses, our democracy is failing today.
Our democracy is fundamentally failing today when the vast majority of the country wants certain things done, and it's not happening. And this ranges from not only voting rights to, you know, health insurance to gun reform -- anything you could name -- preserving Roe versus Wade -- all of those things are not happening. And that's what a vast -- a supermajority of the country wants. So it's time to say we need to -- instead of saying we need to protect what we have, actually we need to change what we have because what we have is broken. Our democracy is fundamentally broken, and one of the only paths to fixing our democracy is the voting rights legislation.
Voting rights -- not passing voting rights legislation doesn't mean we're going to lose our democracy -- we're already on the path, in my view, of that, and, again, it's fundamentally broken. And I know we make the argument, "democracy is working because we passed an infrastructure bill." I mean, it's very easy to pass a giveaway bill that basically doesn't pay for itself for five or six or seven hundred billion dollars -- where the rubber meets the road is the stuff where people actually have to make the hard decisions on. People did not have to make any hard decision on having to give away free money and building bridges and roads. That's not the test of a democracy -- the test of a democracy is voting rights, and we're failing that test today.
(...)
We are in a fragile, fragile point in our democracy -- exceedingly fragile point in our democracy. It's dysfunctional at it's best -- it's dysfunctional at its best today. We're not getting done the big things we need to get done. Heck, climate change is facing us --bearing down (on) us -- we're doing nothing on climate change and everything related to that. And so I hope they're moving, but I still think there are too many Democrats that think, "Oh, if we could just go back to the old way of doing things, everything will be fine." and what I fundamentally say is, right now, our politics is like a bad relationship where you don't trust the person, and the person -- the other person across the table of you -- doesn't share the same values, and may even be an abuser, and you can't be in a relationship with that person that's healthy. And that's where we are today with the Democrats versus Republicans. I wish we had two major parties today that we could fundamentally believe in and shared some fundamental values. We don't. And until the Democrats admit the people across the aisle from them do not share the same fundamental values -- do not believe in the same Constitution that they do -- they have to discard all the old ways of doing things and go about this in a brand new way.
(...)
But I believe fundamentally until we deal with the bones of our democracy and the bones of our country politically, we are going to face this time and time and time again because where the voters are and where the politicians are, are in two fundamentally different places.
CLAIR MCCASKILL, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Okay, so we've got to talk about something bigger than the filibuster, then. We've got to talk about amending the Constitution because the only way -- there's no gerrymandering in the Senate. The deal in the Senate is that states that have very low population have the same amount of representation as --
DOWD: Agreed.
MCCASKILL: -- people with big populations.
DOWD: Agreed.
MCCASKILL: So if, in fact, you're talking about changing the bones of our democracy, let's make it clear, the mountain we're about the climb is amending our Constitution. And we would have to move what the Founding Fathers thought were best, which was two Senators from every state. That will have to be done away with to get to the kind of things that you want to do regardless of the filibuster.
DOWD: Well, I would just like -- the only thing -- I mean, we could have that discussion -- which I'm totally open to having that discussion -- when six United States Senators have the same population as 60 United States Senators -- think about that -- six United States Senators have the same population as 60 in this. I'm not saying, "Let's bite off the Constitution at this time," but there are things that we have to fundamentally understand, and I hope the politicians in Washington understand the brokenness of our democracy so they stop jerking around and the stuff that they do every single day and understand the threat to our democracy that exists today like the Texas Democrats do who are basically now under assault from the legislature to be arrested in this. And until we fundamentally come to that conclusion, we're going to be having this conversation over and over and over again until we understand we're at a five-alarm fire in our country, and our democracy is no longer functional.
