James Carville, messenger with a message about the message
A lot of people are talking about recent remarks by James Carville, warning the Democratic Party about errors they’re making in using so many leftist talking points. Carville became famous as Bill Clinton’s political strategist, and that’s what Carville is into: strategy. It’s difficult to determine if he’s into anything else. To me, he seems to be a pure example (and I don’t mean “pure” in the moral sense) of a political being who is almost entirely about maneuvering in order to win.
This recent interview is of special interest [emphasis mine]:
James Carville: …We just had an election in 2018. We did great. We talked about everything we needed to talk about, and we won. And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds. Someone’s got to step their game up here.
Sean Illing: What does that mean?
James Carville: In 2018, Democrats recruited really strong candidates, really qualified candidates. And the party said, “This is what we’re going to talk about and we’re going to keep talking about it.” And you know what happened? We fucking won. We didn’t get distracted, we didn’t get deflected.
Sean Illing: Give me an example of what you mean by distractions.
James Carville: We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.
It’s difficult to avoid believing that Carville literally doesn’t care about political principles or policies. It’s all – and I mean all – about power and winning. And he believes that’s accomplished by talk rather than actions. Nor does it seem to matter to him what the Democratic candidates actually believe or what they actually plan to do once in office. The winning is all. And the power. The power to do what?
Carville also said:
Look, Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat. He’s never been a Democrat. He’s an ideologue. And I’ve been clear about this: If Bernie is the nominee, I’ll vote for him. No question. I’ll take an ideological fanatic over a career criminal any day. But he’s not a Democrat.
The “career criminal” to whom Carville refers is, of course, Trump. But he never explains what he is referring to when he calls him that – I guess everyone is supposed to know. He uses the term again later in the interview:
Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House. We can’t do anything for anyone if we don’t start there and then acquire more power.
And Carville’s conclusion goes like this:
The purpose of a political party is to acquire power. All right? Without power, nothing matters.
You can feel Carville’s desperation. He believes the Democratic candidates aren’t being pragmatic enough, and that their message isn’t a winning one. He takes it as a given that Democrats must get power or something very dire will happen. In fact, he also says this in the interview:
I’ll just say it this way: The fate of the world depends on the Democrats getting their shit together and winning in November. We have to beat Trump.
The democrats are going crazy because they were so close to achieving their dreams in 2016 — all that was required was for von Pantsuit to win and they would have acquired total power and the US would never recover.
They are so unhinged now that they have let the mask slip and are showing us exactly what they would have done if they won in 2016.
^^^ I agree with Edward.
He also had some comments about condescending and derogatory statements about people in the midwest and south. Some talking head made some remark about some Sanders proposal about college tuition or some damn thing and the talking head snidely implied that LSU wasn’t a ‘real’ university.
That set Carville off because he is a BIG fan of LSU.
But the thing is most of these people can’t help themselves because they are so embedded in leftist circles that they never get any pushback so they are never challenged and eventually they go too far.
Carville is really saying, “Don’t let the voters know what you want to do. Once elected you can do what you want. Just don’t let them know about your plans before the election.”
In other words, lie.
Griffin:
Speaking of condescending remarks: see this.
neo,
Yes, further proof that he is pretty much all about winning and gives little thought to policy.
T. Hobbes: Leviathan, Bk. I, ch. 11, OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MANNERS
A snippet out of context (for which, read the whole):
The vision of Mr. Forty-More-Years waving his arms and yelling in a panic while the current crop of candidates drive the clown car into the ravine is deliciously amusing.
Here’s an amusing bit from “Primary Colors” in which the James Carville character, played by Billy Bob Thornton, is trying to explain to Hillary in the 1992 campaign that they need to commission internal oppo research on Bill Clinton because the sex scandals are starting to emerge.
“Billy Bob Thornton – The Boar Metaphor”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx6EcFv2sTo
Carville is a colorful Southern character. I wish the YouTube went longer from that scene, as it got even funnier with the others in the meeting trying to understand and use the Boar metaphor in their comments.
Carville: I think you need better candidates.
And if you’re concerned about today’s mediocre Democrats not listening to you, well, you’re not alone. The 2016 Democrat nominee had a known, proven master strategist. She was married to him; he was practically required by law to give her free advice. But she wouldn’t take it — one of the most amazing examples of political hubris in modern history.
Enjoy your slow-motion train wreck, Dems. You only have a few candidates left, and Trump could wipe up the floor with any two of them, easily. Me, I’m reinvesting in popcorn futures.
Off topic.
Latest video from Iowa Democratic Caucus Committee on their caucus count.
It was Carville who came up with “It’s the economy, stupid,” which the Clinton campaign used to great effect against Bush 41.
Carville is famously married to Mary Matalin, a Republican/Libertarian political consultant who worked for the Bush 41 campaign in 1992.
My take is Carville is a basic FDR-JFK-type Democrat, not a closet socialist. He assumes Democrats have the moral high ground and the right ideas. However, I doubt he’s on board with the craziness he’s hearing from the Party today, but he can’t criticize directly because he has to make common cause with the radicals to beat Trump.
If the Democrats had stayed more or less where they were in the Clinton years, there would have been no Tea Party.
“Right now the most important thing is getting this career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House.”
Carville’s comment is “rich” considering he is good buddies with the Clinton’s. Speaking of not being nailed down, how about the furniture the Clinton’s tried to remove from the White House;
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-feb-10-mn-23723-story.html
Trump is squeaky clean next Carville’s old boss. Bottom line, the Democrats created their mess on their very own. I have no sympathy. All the headlines, threats, and Major Pete (maybe) becoming their candidate is so ridiculous and awful it is hard to look away. The American voter is not that stupid James. We see what the Democrats are doing, so quit waisting our time with your “panic”.
Here’s another bit from “Primary Colors” which wouldn’t play well today at all, at all.
The Carville character propositions an attractive campaign worker in the open office and exposes himself. She turns him down with a beauty of a put-down and everyone laughs.
Primary Colors – Billy Bob Thornton’s Python
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxQFcTI8-E
I have no idea how close the Billy Bob guy is to the real Carville, but I haven’t run across any denials or outrage for the portrayal. Still, what worked in a 1998 film wouldn’t work today.
The young black guy who has words with Billy Bob is supposed to be based on George Stephanopoulus. Which seems weird. He’s the POV in the film and I guess they needed a major black character.
Mike Nichols (“The Graduate”) directed the film and had a minor reunion with his old comedy partner, Elaine May, who joined him for the writing.
I tell conservatives to watch this film but none ever do. It’s very well made (though nauseating from the conservative POV) and informative of how Dems imagine themselves.
Huxley,
Yep, never seen ‘Primary Colors’ or ‘The American President’ or ‘The West Wing’. I’m exposed to enough hagiographic propaganda already I don’t need to inflict more on myself.
I suspect that Carville is smart enough to know that Trump has neither the desire nor the need to steal. It’s just a convenient and easily sold lie. He has no compunctions about “bearing false witness” either, probably because for him, the end justifies the means.
Nor would he be able to see the mistakes the dems are making if he was an ideologue. He’s a power seeker, who wishes to manipulate “behind the curtain”.
“At base, humanity divides into those who wish to control others and those with no such desire.” Robert Heinlein
JHC, Yes, I thought that comment was a Freudian slip. Of course, it was just the Whitehouse movers that made a mistake. Plausible deniability.
Griffin: Well, I’m a bit weird in that I enjoy getting into other people’s worlds.
I have a new cafe buddy who really is a conservative racist gun nut and would satisfy a liberal’s wet dream of the enemy. He greets me as his “Republican friend.” He is relieved to have someone to talk to in this university cafe. We talk guns and the latest outrages from Democrats.
I can understand what he says to a point, but when he goes off on the people he would like to see killed I get squeamish.
Maybe I shouldn’t talk to him. Maybe I should try to educate him to a higher level. But I don’t. I find it more interesting to understand him.
Carville’s desperation is that the dems are saying these things out-loud where the public can hear them and the msm can’t effectively pretend it never happened.
So, well called: Power for power’s sake and nothing else for him.
But that power is desired… demanded, for to accomplish the mission of destroying America from the inside.
And the dem idiots running their mouths like they’re doing in public threatens that power and that mission.
I’ve only seen Primary Colors once when it came out, but it is not a hagiography of the Clintons. It caused a stir at the time. The novel was written by Anonymous and was later discovered to be Joe Klein. Joe Klein was a reporter embedded long term in the Clinton campaign.
The film is something of a black comedy, with a shocking ending. (I’ll avoid spoilers.) I recall a left-wing pundit, maybe Eric Alterman or David Corn, writing about how uncomfortable it made him. Did he really believe that the ends justify the means, and how bad might the means become? He unsurprisingly concluded that anything goes, in his book.
Hillary, Vince Foster, and Donna Brazile were on the bimbo eruptions team, and they hired PI Jerry Parks. I think Katy Bates played Brazile so they felt they needed another black character. Of course, both Foster and Parks died of acute lead poisoning in real life. (bad joke)
Carville is a cockroach, a mighty foul-mouthed one at that.
He and Matalin live in New Orleans.
He was the invited Tulane medical school commencement speaker at my daughter’s graduation in 2014. He showed up late, disheveled, sloppily dressed, but he did wear a Tulane baseball cap. He talked a lot about himself, and closed by instructing the new MDs it was their task to lower health care costs, a bizarre thought to lay on students perhaps hundreds of thousands in student debt and no power whatsoever to alter health care prices now or in future. That power resides with the Federales and the Aetnas.
Of course Tulane is proudly progressive, which fortunately does not diminish the quality of the education it provides medical students.
But a small group of students and faculty decided some years ago the Hippocratic oath needed amending, so they got pro-abortion language and treatment of all people regardless of color into it, and other PC stuff, threw the 2000 year-old oath away, and the administration approved.
That spirit is why Carville was invited.
But how does he earn a living with his foul mouth now?
Carville is of the old school. Tell the voters (rubes) what they want to hear., not what you really intend to do.
The Democrats, especially the AOC/Bernie wing are openly following the Alinsky plan to a socialist country.
Alinksy’s eight steps to a socialist country:
“1) Healthcare — Control the people’s health and you control the people;
2) Poverty — Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you give them what they need to live;
3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you can increase taxes, which in turn will generate even more poverty;
4) Gun Control — Remove the ability of people to defend themselves from the Government. That way you can create a police state.
5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of a person’s life (Food, Housing, Jobs and Income).
6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children study in school.
7) Religion — Remove the belief in God from Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into wealthy and poor. This will cause discontent and make it easier to increase taxes across the board without losing the support of the poor by making everyone think you will only tax the rich!”
The old establishment Democrats have been following this, but camouflaged their intentions. Now the AOC/Bernie Dems are openly talking about it.
I can also assure concerned viewers that “Primary Colors” is not Clinton worship, and in fact treats an idealistic major character’s realization their heroes have clay feet—and the tragic consequences—with the empathy and compassion it warrants. It also features a shockingly good performance from John Travolta, whose Clinton character exhibits exactly the same aw-shucks self-unaware, but magnetic, dysfunction as the man himself. It’s very well done.
TommyJay: Wiki says the Kathy Bates character in “Primary Colors” was mostly based on Betsey Wright and on Vince Foster for the ** spoiler ** suicide. (I didn’t know Betsey Wright either.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsey_Wright
The film does end on a message of the “ends justify the means,” that papering over Clinton’s scandals was somehow worth it. Which doesn’t work that well in retrospect.
Other than avoid a full impeachment, Bill Clinton didn’t accomplish much. He mainly presided over the post-Cold War prosperity and a roaring hi-tech economy. Good times.
I had a friend who believed that if Clinton had been tested with a real crisis — like 9-11 — he might have become a great leader. Clinton was a bright guy and a real political genius. But that didn’t happen and Clinton didn’t become a great leader. Nor even a somewhat inspiring post-President.
Since I mentioned the word hagiographic I should say I wasn’t just referring to ‘Primary Colors’ but to so many movies and TV shows about Democrat politicians that portray them as at worst lovable rogues to at best saintly savers of the world against the mean right.
There is probably a good movie to be made about Trump and his story that would show the bad and the good about him and his rise to the presidency but Hell shall freeze over before any major Hollywood studio or players would make that.
It is getting so desperate on the Dem side that even Chris Mathews is trying to sound the alarm.
Mayor Pete worries me greatly. He is so personable that people really don’t listen to what he is really saying.
Maybe the new ad by Biden will open up attacks by the other candidates.
Daniel Schwartz on February 8, 2020 at 4:07 pm said:
Carville: I think you need better candidates.
…Me, I’m reinvesting in popcorn futures.
* * *
Great comment.
And here’s a graphic for you, courtesy CTH.
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/cat-popcorn-4.jpg
eeyore on February 8, 2020 at 3:30 pm said:
Carville is really saying, “Don’t let the voters know what you want to do. Once elected you can do what you want. Just don’t let them know about your plans before the election.”
In other words, lie.
* * *
Gee, and here I’ve been told it was only Republicans that did that!
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
Hereogar on February 8, 2020 at 6:20 pm said:
…
So, well called: Power for power’s sake and nothing else for him.
But that power is desired… demanded, for to accomplish the mission of destroying America from the inside.
* * *
Geoffrey Britain on February 8, 2020 at 6:13 pm said:
…
“At base, humanity divides into those who wish to control others and those with no such desire.” Robert Heinlein
* * *
Can’t be repeated often enough, but The Dean never said the two groups were the same size.
As we have discovered, a large part of the Republican Party is quite happy controlling others, when they can manage it, so that the part that has no such desire is fighting on two fronts.
On socialism itself, here’s the word from a woman who grew up in socialist Portugal and is livid because that dead-end ideology is stalking her in America.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/01/28/debit-and-credit/
And as for the “democratic” socialists taking over the USA —
The Lieutenant wouldn’t like that.
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/09/30/lieutenant-wouldnt-like/
Note for readers new to Sarah Hoyt: just skim over the personal asides.
Note for readers new to Sarah Hoyt: just skim over the personal asides.
AesopFan: But those are some of the best parts!
Heinlein was a big influence on me too. After I read “Starship Troopers”, I wished, for a while, to go to a military academy. When I got a slide rule as a kid — Heinlein characters were often brandishing their “slipsticks” — it was a prize possession, though I never mastered all the scales.
BTW, Heinlein’s naval career ended because he developed turberculosis. Writing became a way to make money.
huxley – do you think Neo knew that when she put up the TB post?
Sometimes this serendipity thing gets spooky.
I became a Heinlein addict in 5th grade, and most of our kids followed in the groove. So far, none of them have turned Left, although some of their wives are a bit more L than R.
I think this article was linked on some other post of Neo’s, or maybe PowerLine, but it certainly is one that should be considered in light of our now-explicit Democrat Socialist Party.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-last-days-of-nicolae-and-elena-ceausescu/
Some of the Democrats got the wrong message from Carville.
Or maybe they got the one they thought he wanted them to get.
https://pjmedia.com/election/man-deliberately-crashes-van-into-gop-voter-registration-tent-targeting-trump-campaign-volunteers/
it’s hard to tell what motivates people these days, although Ed at Instapundit linked a piece of Dr. Helen’s that might shed some light.
https://pjmedia.com/drhelen/liberals-high-dopamine/
Matt Margolis wins the headline contest.
Not just considering: he did it — or at least the DOD did it for him.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent pest?”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/youre-fired-trump-considering-ousting-lt-col-vindman-from-national-security-council/
YOU’RE FIRED! Lt. Col. Vindman Loses NSC Job, Escorted from White House
BY MATT MARGOLIS FEBRUARY 7, 2020
Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit this morning, while talking about Rush Limbaugh, links a post of his from 2011 that show the arrogant attitude Carville warned against exposing is not new.
https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/06/26/the-view-of-the-world-from-pinch-avenue/
Continuing the theme of how long-entrenched is the snobbery of the Leftist elites (and not a few on the Right).
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/were-losing-our-damn-minds.php
Steven Hayward
In PowerLine’s post quoting Rush Limbaugh’s statements on the events leading up to his receiving the Medal of Freedom, they link to his program transcript , which contains (in addition to his very moving account of that evening) this observation which ties into Carville’s angst, but Carville obviously doesn’t see it the same way:
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/02/07/what-a-week-im-one-of-the-luckiest-people-alive/
And while we’re talking about Rush —
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-07-at-8.16.37-PM.png?w=788&ssl=1
Sure, after you give him credit for recognizing the threat of Sanders to our republic, when asked if Sanders is the nominee, will he vote for him, he says YES! All the rest before and after this is BS.
“All the rest…”
Indeed.
Carville’s shorter message:
“I may be unhinged, but compared to the rest of you, I’m the epitome of sanity…so listen up!”
Nobody ever seems to mention that Carville, with his slanted eyes and wooden triangular face, resembles classic depictions of the devil to a remarkable degree.
It is nice to see someone get what they deserve. Carville helped tear the heart out of the Democratic Party so it could be replaced by Bill Clinton and his political machine. Now Bill is decaying, Hillary is a bitter failure, Chelsea is a joke, and Carville is learning the old lesson about where putting your faith in men always leads.
Carville thought because he was on the side of the just, it excused any unjust act. He should have paid more attention when he watched “A Man For All Seasons.”
Mike
I’m sure that Carville wants his party to have power solely so they can do good for Americans as he sees good. And he doesn’t really disagree with the left wing of his party, that is clear, he thinks they want good things for Americans as he sees good.
It’s just that the public can’t be trusted with what that is because they think they don’t want it.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
What with one thing and another, I had the misfortune to see quite a bit of Carville between, oh, 1995 and 2004.
Whuff! What a person!
Nastiness incarnate. I kept having to go wash out my brain with Clorox. It was an education. It was a revelation!
Never expected to see worse.
But … then there was the Kavanaugh slaughter (well, beatings, amputation of fingernails & eyelids, and near-slaughter). There were Maizie Hironoluluhito, and Mizz K. Harris. Probably the “high points.” But the silver medallists at the proceedings weren’t far behind.
What Carville really needs is to be utterly forgotten.
https://www.amazon.com/40-More-Years-Democrats-Generation/dp/1416596283#reader_1416596283
The Democrats lost 60-odd seats in the House the year after this hit the presses.
I think that Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote his essay for the democrats and they ignored it.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolhenitsynLies.php
Apparently the new message is to insult the voters.
I don’t know what the hell Biden’s apparent insult–of calling a young voter who asked him a question about his viability as a candidate, and said in answer to him that she had been to a caucus, a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is supposed to mean–but between Biden’s other instances of insulting voters who have the temerity to ask him actual questions or to disagree with him, and poking them in the chest, Biden is increasingly out of control, and fast careening down the road to dementia, if he hasn’t already arrived at that destination.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/biden-lashes-out-at-female-new-hampshire-voter-asking-about-his-poor-performance-in-iowa-youre-a-lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier-video/
I don’t know what the hell Biden’s apparent insult–of calling a young voter who asked him a question about his viability as a candidate, and said in answer to him that she had been to a caucus, a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is supposed to mean
Snow on Pine: Biden doesn’t have a long list of strengths on his resume, but “verbal hatchet man” is one such item.
I won’t forget how Biden treated Paul Ryan in the 2012 veep debate. I assume Biden is falling back on the few things he does well these days.
Another messenger with a message:
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/482178-dershowitz-schumer-and-pelosi-have-to-go
What with one thing and another, I had the misfortune to see quite a bit of Carville between, oh, 1995 and 2004.
Julie near Chicago: Did you see him in person or did you catch him on the tube?
I’ll admit a bias for Carville because he is a Southern character. I grew up largely in the South — Florida, Texas, Louisiana. I’m a mongrel Sunbelt guy and I can’t say I’m a Southerner, but I like Southerners and I will instinctively defend them.
Carville is a Southerner and he’s got a chip on his shoulder about that, which I understand (and approve the message), such as here, from the Vox interview:
Carville: I want to give you an example of the problem here. A few weeks ago, Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics writer for the New York Times, posted a snarky tweet about how LSU canceled classes for the National Championship game. And then he said, do the “Warren/Sanders free public college proposals include LSU, or would it only apply to actual schools?”
You know how fucking patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the goddamn smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so fucking smart.
Appelbaum doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party, but he does represent the urbanist mindset. We can’t win the Senate by looking down at people. The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/7/21123518/trump-2020-election-democratic-party-james-carville
It’s not hard to imagine a couple tweaks to Carville’s life and he could be a die-hard Trump guy.
“…Southerner…”
Don’t know if this is much solace (seven score and fifteen years on), but oh, those wacky, wascally Northerners…. (Northeasterners? White-Mountaineers?)
https://nworeport.me/2020/02/09/poll-n-h-democrats-would-rather-giant-meteor-hit-earth-than-trump-win/
Assuming the above is not a rural legend (or that the media site hasn’t been subsumed by the Babylon Bee), then, given the coming pandemic, those earnest nutters might just get their wish (though not from outer space).
Well, now Mr. “No Malarkey” has an actual accomplishment to his name, he has added a new phrase to our language.
So now one can proudly say, “I may be many things, but at least I’m not a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.””
…And, the highly principled JimBo Carville has done Billy Clinton slime for decades.
C’mon, Dems, keep on smacking your delusional pin heads in public for us Deplorables to see!!!
Carville is an interesting character.
He certainly advocates lying, as Eeyore correctly noted, above.
But he himself, oddly, comes out with relatively straightforward comments which reveal the lie for what it is. That is: He tells Democrat candidates to pretend that they aren’t as crazy-Leftist as they actually are, and that the changes to America which would result from their tenure in office aren’t as radical as they really would be.
Then he comes out and freely tells us that he’s telling them that. But it isn’t as if he’s telling us in private. He might as well say, in a front-page interview, “Hello, public. I’ve advised the Democrats to downplay how insane they are, so that you, the public, won’t find out about it.” Too late!
What produces a personality of this type?
I think he has an “Ugh Field”: A little invisible, frictionless, force-field in his mind around certain thoughts that he finds it intolerable to consider. A self-protective cloaking device which renders him unable to free-associate his way from one thought to a second thought which, for anyone else, the first thought would naturally lead towards.
Logically, he should either accept that the Democratic Party is currently Doctrinaire Leftist and anti-Southern, and hope for its defeat (followed by a reorganization under centrist-liberal lines more to his liking); or else, try to convert it to his own views and then defeat Trump (but there’s nowhere near enough time between now and Election Day for that). But it certainly doesn’t make any sense for him to clamor for the Democrats to soft-pedal the current message while retaining the Leftist intent! For in that case, if it fails, it can always claim it didn’t campaign on sufficiently-strong Leftism, and if it succeeds, the party will be encouraged to double down on what Carville dislikes (anti-Southern Doctrinaire Leftism).
I think the reason he’s behaving irrationally is because he has an “Ugh Field” around the following thought: “The left-liberalism I have long promoted sounds nice in theory, but is in reality a kind of cultural and social acid which dissolves the factors that prevent a society from sliding into the Totalitarian Cultural Marxism that I’ve long-derided as an aberrant or deviant wingnut offshoot of the left. The reason the Democratic Party has collapsed into wingnuttery is because adopters of left-liberalism always do that, after the ideas start to produce their natural consequences. Therefore, the Cultural Right’s objections to those ideas, however poorly-phrased I might think they were, turn out after all to have been correct, and my life’s work has been to promote what I thought was a cultural good but was actually hastening a slide towards madness.”
That would be a painful thought for him to have. It would make him recoil and say “Ugh” in a very visceral way.
Events in recent decades, however, have conspired to make that thought obvious to the rest of us, and we wonder how he could possibly be missing it.
His missing it, because his mind is protecting itself from the primal scream that would emerge if he seriously faced up to it.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive dissonance is healthy for a human mind, though. However well-quarantined, I think it produces secondary dissonances. If Carville really is all about power for power’s sake, with no desire to really do good, that’d be why.
R.C.: Nice analysis. I too read Carville as someone deeply conflicted and not to be reduced to pure will to power.
Though it can’t be forgotten that Carville is a political consultant. He earns his living by producing results for political candidates. And he has been notably successful and no doubt that’s an important part of his identity.
Nonetheless, I believe he is genuinely concerned that the Democratic Party and all his years of devotion to it are in existential jeopardy. It’s blown his mind. He hasn’t thought everything through, including his culpability, but he is ringing the alarm bells as hard as he can.
–James Carville: ‘If We Nominate Jeremy Corbyn It’s Going To Be The End Of Days’
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/02/10/james-carville-nominate-jeremy-corbyn-going-end-days/
Obviously Jeremy Corbyn is a weak code for Bernie Sanders.
“[Carville’s] missing it, because his mind is protecting itself from the primal scream that would emerge if he seriously faced up to it.
I don’t think this kind of cognitive dissonance is healthy for a human mind, though.” – R. C.
* * *
It isn’t healthy, and he isn’t the only one.
I missed this aspect of his interview earlier.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/thank_the_media_for_democrat_free_fallin.html