James Carville Strikes Again
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James Carville, one half of the James Carville – Mary Matalin carny show dropped some knowledge in an interview with Huffington Post
Democratic strategist James Carville warned on Monday that if the Republican Party were to abandon its decades-old alliance with the Christian Right, it would only cement major losses in party identification and vote totals for the GOP.
What? The Republican party needs the religious right? Oh thank you James Carville for bringing those words of wisdom down from the mountain to us slack jawed yokels. Next thing Carville will be telling us that water is often wet.
Look. While at one time James Carville may have posessed something resembling actual political skill, for the last decade or so Carville is nothing more than a media creature still riding the coattails of Bill Clinton’s election. His public statements for the last few years or so demonstrate the sort of surface level political opinion mongering that is far below that of the average moderately informed citizen.
Carville is a joke. A joke who has made a considerable amount of money by “debating” his wife and business partner Mary Matalin in the media about politics neither one of them seem to have any actual convictions about. When you see the Carville-Matalin show the reason why it feels so familiar is that Vince McMahon did it first and does it better. At least when Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan had their feud there was the threat of physical harm.
He would like you to forget it, but James Carville can’t push down the memory hole the fact that he was blasting Howard Dean days after the 2006 election for not doing enough when the data showed that Dean had overperformed at his job. This was Carville backseat driving after years of slapping Terry McAuliffe on the back as they drove the Democratic party into a ditch. To recap: Howard Dean led the Democrats out of the wilderness Terry McAuliffe helped send the party in to and James Carville attacked him for it.
Throughout that period, Carville was making bank on books. It’s something he’s been doing for a while, from the book he hawked during impeachment attacking Ken Starr, to his book about loyalty with regard to (you guessed it) Bill Clinton, and the books he wrote with Paul Begala ostensibly advising the Democrats out of the holes they were in. Lucky for us, nobody listened.
He’s got a new book out now (that’s why he’s talking to Huffpo and I’m sure other outlets) and he’s got the audacity to slap a photoshopped picture of him and President Obama on the cover.
So let’s get this straight: James Carville advocates loser strategies for Democrats, makes money on the backs of Dems while offering these idiotic insights, then has the cojones to try and ride President Obama’s coattails.
James Carville also must believe we forgot the most recent display of his genius, from the 2008 campaign. First he spent days calling Gov. Richardson a Judas for endorsing President Obama, then he bitched and moaned at the Democratic convention that the convention was not being effective vs. McCain (and God knows I’m a Bill Clinton fan but when James Carville was working for Bill Clinton he never achieved the sort of victory the Obama-led Democratic party went on to achieve, did he?). Of course the piece de resistance was Carville sending a message to the delusional PUMAs by wearing Pumas to the convention, when Sen. Clinton herself had long ago put the divisiveness of the campaign behind her.
Look, no matter what I say or write about James Carville he’s going to remain a high profile figure within Democratic politics. Never mind that he rarely knows what he’s talking about, is part of an enterprise solely interested in making money for the Carville family and their Beltway lifestyle, and is still – 17 years later – coasting by on his involvement in the Clinton campaign. I just thought you should know what this one guy thinks about him now.
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The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
One way to look at the Democratic rise to power beginning in 2006 is to see how the “middle way” old-guard of Carville, Shrum, Begala, McCauliffe, and many others were forced to the side to make room for newer blood. Actually, you could say it started with Howard Dean’s credible run for the nomination with Joe Trippi.
The point being, Clinton was the hen laying golden eggs for these guys. He had natural charisma and political instincts that allowed him to win in spite of the tired, bland “conventional wisdom” of Carville and the need for moderation in all things. And after Clinton, what did we get? A feckless, cowardly Democratic party that was afraid to swing back at the Republican smear machine with Gore 2000 and Kerry 2004.
What’s refreshing about the success of DailyKOS on the one hand, and the Axelrod Chicago machine, is that while asshats like Carville will continue to be invited onto the networks for paid appearances, they don’t really have a hand in the future of the Democratic party any longer. At least, not an instrumental one.
Compare this to the death of the GOP — they seem to want new blood, from somewhere, but who are they putting up as the future of their party? Newt f’ing Gingrich. Jindal and Palin can’t speak on camera without a majority of Americans laughing at them. Romney? I’m thinking he’ll be the nominee in 2012. At least he understands the basics of how modern media works (i.e., speak in complete sentences, don’t look like Kenneth the Intern, etc).
The GOP has to get rid of its dead weight, and soon before the party disintegrates. But they value loyalty above all else, and this makes it harder for them to undergo the necessary purging.
The Dems? I think we dodged a huge long-term bullet by nominating Obama over Hillary re: recycling the Carvilles and Shrums and Begalas. Thank God.
Speaking as a guy whose first political book was “We’re Right, They’re Wrong” and who has seen “The War Room” several times, I really used to love Carville, but he seems to have firmly supplanted himself in the Washington bubble and doesn’t seem to want or care to leave his comfy seat at the table. My advice would be for him to start saying insightful stuff or let some of the new lib talking heads take over.
I’m sick of Carville and Mudcat Saunders and the legion of “democratic strategists” on cable news. They don’t understand how the game is played now and don’t care to learn either
Great piece, OW, but one sin: Vincent “McMahon” Lupton never did anything better, nor was he first in the field of scripted combat. Vinnie destroyed wrestling as we knew and loved it. And Hogan-Andre was one of the worst PPV matches ever.
Perhaps someone from the Obama administration ought to tell Carville to just shut up and go away. Someone, say, like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who apparently has a daily conference call with Carville, along with Paul Begala and ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, could use one of these absolutely innocuous and harmless and frivolous chats to tell him to STFU.
J.
Say what you want about Carville what he is saying in that HuffPo article is the truth and something a lot of people don’t want to say in public lest it look like they are taking victory laps. The underlying truth is that the GOP CAN’T remake itself because the religious right is its major base. That means they can’t recruit pro choice or pro gay rights/marriage candidates to the party. And even as other groups have left the GOP the religious right has stayed because of that they are even a more prominent group that the GOP has to pander to now. So on the social issues that had always helped to win them elections the Republicans are now doomed to be on the wrong side of history. That means that aside from some major catastrophe the cratering we are seeing from the Republicans over the last two voting cycles will continue. They will still win in the south and sporadically in other parts of the country but they will not be a national party again any time soon. When you add in the racial demographic changes our Country is going through the picture for Republicans gets even uglier. Now Carville is not most people’s cup of tea but as you look around the intertubes try to find someone else saying what he is saying. Better yet try to find any data that will dispute what he is saying.
Oliver this post brings a Mary Matalin memory to the surface.
Years ago I attended a conference that had Matalin as the keynote speaker. She began her speech with a story about how difficult it was for her to leave her young children to fly to Atlanta that day. She recalled that as she was walking out the door, her son asked if he were good, would she bring him a gift.
Matalin said she replied, “Why can’t you be like your father and be good for nothing?”
That’s a great line, metric. Wonderful double meaning. And entirely typical of the public face of their relationship.
Another exemplar of that public face is the cover of their book — notice the middle finger of Matalin’s left hand?
http://www.oldcornerbooks.com/fgb455/images/items/0679431039.jpg
J.
While I agree with Oliver’s take on Carville, “sgwhiteinfla” is absolutely right.
It’s not said often enough that the Republican Party has only managed their corporatist undertakings because of it’s theocratic base.
That increasingly extreme right wing “Christianists” have gotten in bed with the money changers has been profoundly underreported.
Without the Republican’s angry, anti-choice, anti-gay, theocratic base, it never would have gotten it’s pro-Corporatist agenda shoved through Congress.
Frankly the closest example to what the Republican Party has done is to what the Saud King did in Saudi Arabia: grant Wahhibism carte blanche control over social matters in return for unwavering support of the King’s power.
As I understand it, Wahhibism has been at the root of funding madrassas in the hinterlands of Pakistan that teach and push some of the most militant forms of Islam. It’s arguably why the volatile western edge of Pakistan has so easily fallen prey to the Taliban extremists.
While it’s important to note that Islam has over a billion law abiding worshipers, it really only takes a small pocket of crazy to do some serious damage in these modern times. Especially as the Taliban creep towards Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This may have been Republican Bush’s greatest military failure: misdirecting American troops away from the threat in Afghanistan into Iraq left the Taliban strong enough to metastatize into Pakistan.
The sick bargain that the Saud Kingdom has with it’s Wahhibist sects is the same kind of foul bargain that Republicans struck with the theocratic movement here in the States decades ago. While it’s on a tiny minority of splinter fanatics bombing abortion clinics, it’s the kind of domestic terrorism that Republicans have been obscenely complacent about. That disturbing complacency about domestic clinic terrorism is part of the Devil’s bargain that Republicans have with it’s theocratic base.
That base is the Republican’s ground troops during election time. Republican’s rely on Sunday before election day to get the troops mobilized during their 72 hour warmup to the (usually) Tuesday election.
Ironically, one of the only silver linings that came out of the dust clouds of 9/11 was that right wing Christian terrorists dramatically reduced their number of abortion clinic bombings and attacks. But attacks on abortion clinics still happen with alarming regularity.
[below is from an earlier post]
Abortion clinic violence:
Recent examples of right wing terrorism:
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/violence/history_violence.html
Specifically in the last eight years:
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/violence/history_extreme.asp
Historical analysis from 1977 to 1994:
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/clinics/
“There were 1,700 acts of violence against abortion providers between 1977 and 1994, with four people killed in 1994 and one in 1993, according to statistics from the National Abortion Federation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has logged 167 attacks against abortion clinics over the past 15 years.”
“In 1984, there were 18 bombings against abortion clinics. In 1993, there were 78 death threats aimed at clinic employees. And, in 1996, bombings, threats and harassment affected about one-third of U.S. abortion clinics.”
My comment(s) got eateded?
Probably just delayed, Newsy. Happens to me fairly often.
In your case, the filters probably choked on the blather.
J.
This thread has me feeling a bit uneasy.
I’m not a fan of Carville. BUT – as a life time lefty – I’m all too aware of how often we eat our own babies. Lay off a bit.
As to Carville’s comments about the RR and the GOP – he’s right – obviously – take the RR away from the GOP and all that’s left is the KKK and McCain’s daughter. The fact that Big C’s comments about the RR & GOP are a bit obvious, trite and unnecessary doesn’t mean he deserves a full court press against him.
There I feel better now.
Lay off a bit.
What do we lose if, god willing, we were to lose Carville? Nothing. It won’t happen. But if I can add to it a little bit by making a better, Carville-free left, I’m all for throwing out this baby with his bathwater.
When it comes to getting a message across, there really is a limit to how much information people can take in. Carville eats up the proverbial oxygen with his trite, 90′s “third way” Broderistic bullshit.
So indeed, we Dems would be better off without him. Like I said, the party is doing well now because the Carville-Shrum-Begala axis of mediocrity was replaced by the netroots and by Obama’s team. Let’s keep up the momentum and DTMFA.
While it’s useful to differentiate Carville’s moderate Republicanism from the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, and it’s also important to make a point that the real Democratic Wing has it’s oxygen used up by right of center centrists like Carville, Carville, when he’s been at his best, has and still occasionally does manage to succinctly articulate things that need succinct articulation.
Look at the crossroads that Carville sets up for the Republicans: dump your theocratic base and lose OR keep your theocratic base and lose.
Without the Republican’s theocratic base it loses it’s ground troops.
With the Republican’s theocratic base it loses Independents and moderate Republicans.
That paradox of the Republican Party needs to get wider attention because when the Republicans actually, finally choose a path, then THAT PATH gets more attention. It’s a lose lose situation.
Carville is highlighting the Republicans two losing paths. He’s painting the frame that further illustrates the path that the Republican Party will inevitably choose, which in turn generates more attention to that path once it’s chosen, which in turn will alienate either the Republican Party’s theocratic ground troops OR alienate Independents and moderate Republicans.
On that front, Carville is doing Yeoman’s work. While it’s not original work, it’s still important work.
One of the Dem’s failures is in not repeating realities often and loudly enough. Instead, reality is assumed to be obvious. Sure, water is wet, but when the other side is repeatedly saying that water is dry, eventually reality can become eclipsed.
Consider the kind of crazy foolish things that the Republican Party leaders have suckered it’s naive faithful base into believing and don’t assume that they couldn’t sucker those faithful into believing that water is dry.
In a perfect world, the Republican’s theocratic base would come to the epiphany that Christ always was and still is a liberal and that the True Christian Path is voting for progressives.
But until the left get used to regularly and loudly screaming “WATER IS WET,” don’t be surprised when your faithful Republican neighbor claims that water is dry.
On that front, Carville is doing Yeoman’s work. While it’s not original work, it’s still important work.
Yeah, still not convinced that anything is gained by having James Carville state the obvious.
Not even a good Photoshop job.
Carville is positioning himself to get a seat next to Dick “Dick” Morris on Fox.
“… still not convinced that anything is gained by having James Carville state the obvious.”
The moderate Republicans I know are not fans of the extreme religious right’s influence over the Republican Party. The more the fact that the Republican Party relies on that extreme religious base is repeated, the more it drives them from the party.
To the left, though, “the obvious” is, well, obvious, so they don’t feel a need to keep repeating it.
Which is why the right wing gets away with the Big Lie and wins elections.
The right wing just keeps hammering away with their fictions until election day comes along. And then the left is, well, usually left surprised.
For decades the left has had the better arguments on any number of issues, the left has had the facts, the evidence, the support of science, better policies, and often even broad public support.
But all of those things are so “obvious” to the left that it never occurs to the “left” that anyone else doesn’t ‘know’ the obvious.
The right wing never underestimates it’s base. They rely on low information voters who aren’t paying much attention. People who busy themselves with other things than reading about politics on the internet.
The right also relies on Believers. Faithful people who accept what they are told by authority figures they trust.
So the right wing create fictional characters that are bestowed “authority” so that people of faith accept what those people tell them. Even if it’s flat out lies that repudiate the “obvious.”
A lot of Republican voters are genuinely good people that just got suckered.
If the left weren’t so dismissive of media outlets like radio, and television, and, yes, paper with ink on it, and recognized the importance of using those media tools to connect more vigorously with those decent Republican voters, the ‘left’ would be in a sharply better position to enact it’s goals.
There are a vast number of people I know that still get their information through radio, print, and tv. Many of them vote and more of them would if the ‘left’ reached out to them more effectively through the media channels those people are connected to: radio, print, and tv.
Carville’s traditional genius has been in being able to distill the “obvious” into memorable soundbites that can be repeated in an interview format that is effective on TV, radio, and, you guessed it, print with ink on it.