Wednesday, November 15, 2006

I realize...

...that James Carville is just a giant, bald, ET-looking, bespectacled fish in a barrel at this point, but...this is still one mighty fine takedown courtesy of one Mr. Chris Bowers...

There are two main reasons why James Carville does not like Howard Dean. The first is that Howard Dean does not trash other Democrats, and Carville prefers Democrats who throw their own party under the bus. The second is that he is a political consultant, and as such many of his friends have gotten rich off of commissions from television advertisements. As far as he is concerned, all donations to all Democratic committees exist so that he and his friends can get richer. Since Howard Dean is spending money on field organizers and grants to state parties, his friends tend to not get rich from the money the DNC raised. This is abhorrent to Carville, since Democratic Party committees exist to make him and his friends rich.

...

Yet still, after producing a sub-.500 record int eh top fifteen House targets, Carville has the gall to tell the press that he and his other consultant buddies deserved even more money so that they could have run even more ineffective advertisements.

...

Carville can try and continue his consulting con that more money to the DCCC would have automatically translated into more victories for Democrats in the House, but looking at our performance in the top fifteen targets, I have to say that is hardly a guarantee. What is a guarantee is that it would have made his rich consulting buddies a lot more money. We practically swept every close race in the Senate, so I have no beef with their consultants. However, when it comes to the House, I want answers. Did we use the right consultants? What other options to we have? What commissions are they taking from these ads? How can we work to reduce the size of those commissions if they are being done on a percentage basis? To what extent are other forms of independent expenditures besides advertising on broadcast advertising more or less effective? How much money does James Carville personally stand to gain from the extra money he wanted channeled to close House races?
Bowers is a little (okay, a lot) more civil than I'm capable of being at the moment, but I'll forgive him for that. Seriously, how long do people like Carville still get to be on TV? When does being good at your job actually come into play? When does looking like a Republican-esque opportunist by calling for Howard Dean's head moments after he helped to engineer an election landslide actually hurt your credibility? These are obviously rhetorical questions...I know what the answers would be if I really wanted to ask...