"Matthew John Dowd" is an American political consultant who was the chief strategist for the George W. Bush presidential campaign, 2004/Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign. In December 2007, he was introduced on American Broadcasting Company/ABC's Good Morning America as its new political contributor. He also appears on the same network's This Week (ABC TV series)/This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

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Feingold represents the largest share of the Democratic base and how they feel about this issue.

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It reminds me of what (Howard) Dean did . . . knowing the intensity of the Democratic base on Bush, that whoever took on Bush directly in a vociferous way was going to get a big bump.

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A chorus of 'the sky is falling.'

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Every incumbent president in the last 25 years has been behind the opposition in the latter part of his first term -- the sky is not falling.

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The benefit the Republicans have is geography and redistricting. There is a very small window for Democrats to take advantage of.

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[Austin aides have their focus groups too, and they claim the vice president's aggressiveness only rankles, reminding voters of the ugly noises from the past four or five years in Washington, the showdowns and shutdowns. The less partisan voters, says the campaign, like Bush's happy soundings of cooperation.] Among swing voters, they don't care about the party labels, ... They want things solved.

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After the Democratic nominee is all but certain in the late winter/early spring, it would not be surprising for us to fall behind for a bit.

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All of that makes it harder on the Democrats. That's a benefit we have that we never had before.

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