On Monday's Deadline: White House, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was joined by former ABC News analyst Matt Dowd as the two responded to Democratic strategist James Carville blaming the woke left for recent Democratic electoral losses.
After playing a clip of Carville making his comments on PBS NewsHour, Wallace picked up on a tweet in which Dowd claimed that Jesus would be considered "woke" as she set up the segment:
Seemingly as a reaction to part of that conversation, our friend Matt Dowd chimed in yesterday on Twitter, tweeting this, quote: "As I sat in church today, I was thinking, if Jesus were here today, he would be accused of being woke. How about we just say it is human decency to treat all with respect and dignity, and that it is constitutional to say all men and women are equal?"
Without acknowledging that "woke" leftists are known for such excesses as trying to insert politics everywhere, and even getting people fired from non-political jobs for having unpopular views, Dowd -- who is currently running for Texas lieutenant governor as a Democrat -- defended his reasoning:
Well, first, I don't ever think it's a really good thing for old white guys to use the term "woke," right, and to frame the reference of that. To me, this is, like, it's another thing like Critical Race Theory, right, like people say this word, and it's taken as a pejorative, but there's no -- nobody knows what it means that's accusing other people of it.
And as I said in my tweet -- and I've tried to say -- how about we just try to treat everybody with decency and respect and a common sense of -- that they belong here and, obviously, that all men and women are created equal? That's what we need to get to. The only people that this seems to be afire about is, again, in the sort of right-wing infrastructure ecosystem here and there.
Wallace soon jumped in to repeat the discredited claim pushed by journalists and other liberals that Virginia schools are not exposing children to Critical Race Theory:
So you don't think education and -- which was wrapped up in a whole bunch of things -- it wasn't just this campaign pledge from Glenn Youngkin to ban Critical Race Theory -- which isn't taught in Virginia public schools, but it meant something to Virginia voters. I mean, I hear you, and I said that, and the right went berserk -- but Critical Race Theory isn't taught in schools -- it's an attack that connotes something that isn't real. It's real to those voters who swung in a huge way in the suburbs and ran up margins for Glenn Youngkin in rural Virginia.
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Transcript follows:
Deadline: White House
November 8, 2021
5:48 p.m. Eastern
NICOLLE WALLACE: That was James Carville in the wake of Election Day last week, blaming Democrats' wokeness as the reason for their losses across the board and starting a conversation -- a very, very vibrant one -- about how exactly Democrats have lost some of the good things they had going for them -- as Congressman Connolly said earlier in this program, 13-point swing since one year ago.
Seemingly as a reaction to part of that conversation, our friend Matt Dowd chimed in yesterday on Twitter, tweeting this, quote: "As I sat in church today, I was thinking, if Jesus were here today, he would be accused of being woke. How about we just say it is human decency to treat all with respect and dignity, and that it is constitutional to say all men and women are equal?" ... I want to try to nail you down on where you've come down on. I think this is probably not a very helpful debate to have about wokeness, but I wonder -- I wonder what you think
MATTHEW DOWD, FORMER ABC NEWS ANALYST: Well, first, I don't ever think it's a really good thing for old white guys to use the term "woke," right, and to frame the reference of that. To me, this is, like, it's another thing like Critical Race Theory, right, like people say this word, and it's taken as a pejorative, but there's no -- nobody knows what it means that's accusing other people of it.
And as I said in my tweet -- and I've tried to say -- how about we just try to treat everybody with decency and respect and a common sense of -- that they belong here and, obviously, that all men and women are created equal? That's what we need to get to. The only people that this seems to be afire about is, again, in the sort of right-wing infrastructure ecosystem here and there. But Democrats need to get back to just using the common values that every American connects to. And that's the conversation that we need to have in the course of this.
I don't think Terry McAuliffe lost Virginia because of the woke culture in all of this. He probably, in my view, lost more because he talked about Donald Trump too much. And I think that's what the problem with the voters have right now is they want to have this battle on election. In their mind, Donald Trump is yesterday, and we all know he sort of surfaces in this. But they want to know your candidacy versus the other person. What's the difference? And what are you going to do in my life? Quit talking about Donald Trump.
WALLACE: So you don't think education and -- which was wrapped up in a whole bunch of things -- it wasn't just this campaign pledge from Glenn Youngkin to ban Critical Race Theory -- which isn't taught in Virginia public schools, but it meant something to Virginia voters. I mean, I hear you, and I said that, and the right went berserk -- but Critical Race Theory isn't taught in schools -- it's an attack that connotes something that isn't real. It's real to those voters who swung in a huge way in the suburbs and ran up margins for Glenn Youngkin in rural Virginia.
DOWD: Well, here's -- this is the problem that I want to -- and my candidacy want to try to help Democrats in this -- and I said this during the 2004 campaign -- any time the other side is using your term, you're winning in the course of the race. And so if they're using your terminology, you're winning in this race.
