I hereby announce that I am starting a memoir...

Digby has a piece about Bob Shrum’s upcoming memoir and the role the Shrums and Carvilles played in losing, well, most recent elections. Really, I should write a memoir too...as far as I can tell, I’ve had as much success in electing presidents as Shrum has...

Kerry voted for Bush’s Iraq war resolution, following the “guidance” offered by Democracy Corps, a non-profit “dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.”

On October 3, 2002, prior to the Iraq war resolution votes, Democracy Corps (founded in 1999 by James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Bob Shrum) advised Capitol Hill Democrats: “This decision [to support or oppose an Iraq war resolution] will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent).”

So I don't have to waste the time, Digby goes ahead and points out that if the war went well, people were going to vote for Bush anyway, so nobody scored any political points for this horrid, immoral vote that helped to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

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Keep talking, James...

Seriously, somebody take the mic away from James Carville. I'm sure he's got quite the death grip on it, and tugging it away from him will be harder than it looks (thin but wiry), but...he's just not in any way, shape, or form relevant to the national discussion any longer. And this crap is just speeding up the inevitable.

There was James Carville on CNN's Situation Room, desperately trying to explain why Sen. Clinton voted for the war, even though other senators who had been given the same faulty intel she had, voted against it: "But they weren't from New York," he said. "Their state wasn't hit. They didn't have to deal with the grief of these 3,000 people."

Apparently, according to James Carville, the only way to appear tough is to tie 9/11 to Iraq. Well guess what, James...you’re done. People want 'smart and strong in your convictions', not 'tough for tough’s sake.'

Then again...

Keep talking, James. Every time you open your mouth, you bring Hillary down even worse than her vote for Iraq does.

This may be naive optimism talking, but I'm really starting to think that Hillary has about a 10-15% chance, at best, of scoring the Dem nod. Maybe even less than that. She can amass the biggest war chest in the history of the world, and I just don't think it's going to happen. As BooMan has pointed out (h/t Avedon), there are severe hints of Muskie bleeding through. Now, I was not alive in 1972 (though I have read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail...that counts, right?), so I’ll leave that commentary to others, but there are two tremendous factors working against Hillary at the moment.

1. She has absolutely no sense of “realness” to her whatsoever. I have no doubt that she stands for (mostly) the right things, and let’s be honest—I’d vote for her against Sellout McCain or Manwhore Guiliani, but she just can’t open her mouth at this point without betraying a sense of political calculation. She has more charisma (somehow) than John Kerry, but she also has an even bigger hint of calculation, and she’s just taken too damn many positions on too many damn issues to inspire people like a certain other candidate is/will. Which leads to...

2. Obamania. Not saying he’s Bobby Kennedy II, but...what was the line from American President? “They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand”? Well...people are so desperate for a Bobby II that they’re seeing what they want to see in him. And who knows...he might actually be the real thing. If he can get through the next 11 months or so without a DeanScream-esque misstep, I think the nomination’s his (sans a change in the game, like if Gore decides to run or something).

The press (and his opponents) can go on and on about his inexperience as a disadvantage, but I honestly think that works to his advantage. He doesn’t have any votes to defend, and that will help him considerably. I don’t personally know what I think of Obama yet (too much touchy feely talk about "coming together," but he still might be the best horse in the race...other than Chris Dodd, of course...but I’m not sure it matters. Four years ago, people were drawn to Howard Dean because he was speaking truth to power. He was the only one saying what thousands of voters were thinking. People are not drawn to Obama for the same reasons, but if he establishes himself in the netroots (and let’s face it, Edwards’ blogger issue can only help that), then I cannot even imagine how much money he will raise. Hillary can get all the big money she wants—people have never been, and will never be, as jazzed to be in her presence as people are for Obama right now. I haven’t seen anything like this, especially this early in the campaign, and at this point, I’d say he’s got about a 60% chance of winning the nod. And if he does, I think he destroys his Republican counterpart. Imagine how old John McCain will seem next to Obama? All it’s going to take is for him not to screw up (and maybe for Al Gore to not enter the race). Then again, plenty of strong-looking candidates have screwed up in the past. This is politics, after all.

And then again, exactly four years ago I thought John Kerry didn't have a shot either, and for a lot of the exact same reasons. So really...whaddo I know? All I know is, James Carville should keep talking. It helps certain Democrats, but not in the way he thinks it does.

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We Are All A-holes from Vermont Now...

Really, how does Paul Begala still have any cred whatsoever? Just wondering. Maybe he doesn't, but he still thinks he does. His (and Carville’s) “We won because of Rahm--Howard Dean sucks” schtick, really, was tired and old before it even came out of their mouth for the first time.

I was going to just politely greet him and shake his hand, but I had an attack of conscience. After all that Begala and Carville have done to undermine Gov. Dean’s efforts at the DNC, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. "I hope you will support the 50-state strategy," I told him, expecting the shrug off or a "nice to meet you too," but that isn’t what Begala had in mind.

"That depends what you mean by 50 state strategy he said." I responded by telling him that I meant the plan for Democrats to compete everywhere and for every office in the country. That I don’t support he said, "we should start with principles and values." "Sure, we should compete everywhere" he muttered, "but that’s not the right strategy." He continued that after working for over 30 campaigns this cycle, not a single one of those campaigns was helped by the 50-state strategy. He challenged me to name examples where the 50-state strategy helped us win in 2006. I proceeded to cite wins in Kentucky and Indiana, along with progress in Nebraska and Kansas as evidence of the plan’s short term success.

"Look," he said, "When we started there were only about 15 competitive races, but Rahm made the field over 35 by the end and that had nothing to do with the 50-state strategy." I told him we never would have had so many competitive districts if not for the DNC investing staffers and resources into those states early on and expanding the playing field. "So you have people out there, what are they doing there though?" he questioned. " I told him they were building a long term infrastructure for the Democratic Party, and we had people all over America knocking on doors and spreading the Democratic message. "So what do they say when they knock on the doors then?" he asked me. I told him they had a succinct 6 point plan for a "new direction" that they were discussing, a cohesive message that we haven’t had in the past. "Anyway," Begala continued... "I don’t need some a**hole from Vermont telling me what to do."

One day, Carville and Begala will look up and realize that nobody’s paying attention to them anymore. Not that that will stop them from talking...

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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...

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Have to Be More Than the Other Guy

Good analysis of Tuesday's election results nationally here. I got elected to a school board once, primarily because the incumbent had aggravated too many people to get chosen again. IOW, all I had to do in the campaign was make clear that I wasn't worse than he was. That's the way elections are. Usually, they're judgments of the incumbents, not endorsements of the challengers. We knew all along that the Dems weren't putting forth a new view of themselves in this campaign, just saying "We're not Bush." Okay, it was enough. But now they're already arguing over what "we're not Bush" means. Why? Because they don't know who they are themselves. And, as this article makes clear, that's the difference between being a long-term viable party and just the default position when the Repubs get too extreme and overreaching in their don't-think-it's-over quest for total domination of our political system. They're weakened right now, so the Dems have a chance to develop a strong counter of responsibility and effectiveness while clarifying everything wrong about the Repubs. Or, they can immediately start cutting each other up, like that moron Carville is trying to do with his idiotic suggestion to dump Dean (can we finally admit that Carville is a third-rate Rove whose 1992 claim to fame was the last Repub implosion, not some genius result of his making??), and not get the right things done to offset the Busheviks and restore us to our historical path. (Demosthenes has the definitive tribute to Dean here.) The fate of the American Legacy is literally in their hands. Was this just a bump in the fall of our republic or an actual turnaround? The tools are there for the turnaround. The blame will be theirs if they fail.

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