Will The Times Ever Hire A Political Columnist To Replace Maureen Dowd?

“Who dis?” –Maureen Dowd

I suppose most intelligent people unfortunate enough to read Maureen Dowd’s latest excrescence will focus on the latest round of “Donald the Dove” gullibility that begins the meandering. (In a perfect marriage of form and content, she uses the “heads will explode from x to x” cliche twice in an 800-word column.) I am here to tell you it gets even worse. I’ve rarely seen a better example of her sheer laziness, her uncritical devotion to stale conventional wisdom, than the back end of this column. Here, for example, she displays her legendarily sure grasp of political history:

Strangely enough, though, a strong midterm for the Democrats could help Trump two years down the road if they take back the reins of Congress and go too far, as Democrats are wont to do.

Republicans paid a price in 1998 for pushing to impeach Bill Clinton, and Clinton regained popularity.

“The Democrats are always going too far. As my one example, here’s a case of the Republicans going too far.”

And she follows contemporary politics with even less interest:

As far as the presidential race in 2020, the Democrats seem to be repeating the mistake that Hillary Clinton made: counting on the awfulness of Trump to do their work for them. (And the righteousness of Robert Mueller.)

They are not grooming a gleaming crop of presidential contenders or honing a seductive message that could win back the alienated voters who put Trump in just because he promised to shake things up.

Their leadership and top presidential prospects symbolize the past, not the future. They should be the éminences grises ushering in an exciting new generation, not the retreads and missed-their-moments dominating the field, as the entire party is leaping to the left — another complication in a national election where you have to appeal to a wide swath of voters.

Like, seriously, what the hell is she talking about? The tell is that she doesn’t mention a single major prospective candidate for the 2020 nomination, because it would make the foolishness of her assertions immediately apparent. First of all — as she sorta acknowledges, but only to recycle the stale complacent Villager wisdom she’s always exemplified that moving to the left is always bad — the major Democratic candidates have been awash in policy innovation — postal banking! Job guarantees! Medicare for all! The idea that Democrats are just running against Trump is ludicrously false for anyone paying even a modicum of attention. Neither is the Democratic field being dominated by “retreads and missed-their-moments” — Gillibrand? Booker? Harris? Warren? Maybe Bernie qualifies, and if she takes Biden ’20 seriously that says a lot more about here than the Democratic field. But this is all just pure recitation of script, with no connection to reality whatsoever. Which is the problem when you hire people who don’t care about policy or politics to write about politics.

But, hey, even though she’s useless as a political analyst, you have to admit that Dowd is always right on top of the Zeigeist:

And even as Trump helped end the Korean War — does that call for a special episode of “M*A*S*H”?

BOOM! The New York Times may not print Hi and Lois but if you find its pop culture references too fresh you have MoDO.