On Saturday's Good Morning America, ABC chief political analyst Matthew Dowd was asked about political winners and losers of impeachment, and the former Bush pollster was ready with a liberal-pleasing answer. He insisted one of the big losers was "the constitutional system of checks and balances."
DAN HARRIS: Assuming that Melissa is right, that the president is likely to be acquitted next week, politically, are there winners and losers here?
MATTHEW DOWD: Well, so broadly I think one of the big losers is the constitutional system of checks and balances. The Founders envisioned a president who might push their power too far but they never envisioned a Senate abdicating their responsibility to hold that president in check. And given a football analogy on the winners and losers, since it’s Super Bowl weekend, is the Republicans won in the short term but it’s a little bit like winning a football game, but losing a bunch of players to injury. Because I think in the end in the long term what this could really do is hurt those people running for office for the Senate, and possibly the president in the long term going to November.
So I think it’s a mixed bag on this but definitely I think our system of checks and balances suffered during this time.
Dowd didn't consider the Senate was acting as a check on the excesses of the House Democrats. ABC News is not where anyone goes for a check or a balance on Democrats. That wasn't the end of the left-wing talking points.
HARRIS: There are some people on the left who have worried aloud that an acquittal is going to give a green light to the president to go and solicit further interference by foreign governments in our elections. Do you share that concern?
MELISSA MORRIS: Well, I think it's a very real concern, certainly since one of the president's defenders, professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard law school suggested anything the president did in anticipation of his re-election or in furtherance of his re-election was actually okay. That's a stunning statement that I think most constitutional law scholars would take objection with.
Dershowitz told NPR that was not what he said, and not what he meant. He said if a president committed crimes to gain re-election (like Nixon and the Watergate break-in) that's impeachable, but not if a president wasn't committing a crime.
