Dowd — in an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, who served as communications director on the Bush ’04 campaign — argued that Democrats sometimes “take themselves too seriously” and, in the process, don’t understand that voters want a good “laugh.”
“And if you’re laughing at a politician, you’re winning. If you can get voters to laugh at somebody else, you’re winning in the course of this,” Dowd said. “And that’s, I think, the cultural moment that we’re in is how do you relate to where people are?”
Moments earlier, he recalled a 2004 press briefing where members of the media questioned if Bush was going to win that year’s presidential election.
“I said at that briefing, ‘I can give you a bunch of polls and all that but just do one thing — go to our campaign and go to the [John] Kerry campaign and whoever is having the most fun is going to win,’” he said.
Dowd said Fox News and Republicans simply “can’t get a handle on” Newsom’s new social media groove.
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“They simultaneously say, ‘This isn’t classy. This is horrible. He’s a governor. He should be more respectful.’ They say that then the next they say, ‘He’s copying Donald Trump’ … and they don’t understand, it’s a complete parody!” said Dowd with a smile.