carville’s blind spots
A dash indifferent in the inter-mural Democratic Party sparring. James Carville is entitled to have opinions, and if at first his barking at the victories of a few dsa candidates, I then hear some casual snottiness from co-hosts of the Majority Report — reminiscing on taking a bold stand in not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and I am happy for them in escaping the matrix but see there the emblem that snatches a play for Peoria. Carville for his part has a quot e nation from Ilhan Omar of generic “white men scare me” to “if you want to run, don’t do it as a Democrat, caucusing will be fine” — oh, don’t taunt the party. Yeah, but we proceed to his longer rant and slide into the contradictions — “try winning somewhere other than Brooklyn or Seattle!”. Which. She did. And also notable is he is upset that some of those candidates won there. But, the Carville line is when they do this, then he will respect you all.
The bigger problem with Carville comes as he does the “here’s a little history lesson on the elections of the 21st century.” Fully expect the sarcastic selling on Bill Clinton, for 2000 and “the only reason Florida could stop the vote count” to that “what don’t you like about Peace and prosperity?” question on Nader and his voters — but where I don’t understand the man is in an unexplained because he figures it to be self-evident on 2016 which is that “Bernie Sanders” cost Hillary the election. (A reprise of Nader, I guess) Bernie Sanders who — did that full faith effort to win the president and earn Carville’s respect. He did not succeed, but you can’t blame the guy for trying. Given that he was not running in the general or endorsing anyone but Hillary Clinton, I don’t understand. If you want spot some less than enthusiastic attitudes on Hillary, I can do so on (Carville’s choice) Hillary Clinton with Obama in 2008 who — also kept campaigning in the primary fiercely and more personally than Sanders did with her past the point she had a chance.
A curious matter. Carville spent 2023 beating the drum, understandably, for Biden to step aside for re-election, citing that he’s old and knows what it is like to be old. Also old is Maine’s governor and party establishment pick for senate — who Carville has said he did some campaign work for — and perhaps he now feels burned in having come around for Platner. Nature abhors a vacuum, someone was going to fill the void left by being handed the unpopular governor who lacked energy in campaign. And I would like to think someone — one of those five Democrats running for governor — would have, but looking over to Michigan I guess I am not sure — the Democrat who sat in the middle between the amazingly sucky establishment pick and the DSA-speaking type, the one who received Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement as opposed to the one with Bernie Sanders’s — and probably the one I would opt for — cratered in the polls and is out. The center cannot hold. Hard to say how a two-way race where she represented the establishment pick against the wild and wacky small s socialism or the leftward pick against the establishment pick — but it does not bode much well in transplanting over to a hypothetical Maine contest with a third not nasty tattoo having not dark drunkened rap-ey past, or two-way race against him. So — Carville has half a point — but the half a point he does not have glares badly.