Dem
47
GOP
53
Like Karl Rove, James Carville has a reputation for being a political genius. So, like Rove (and Frank Luntz, and a couple of others), the media treats his words like manna from heaven. That same media does not seem to take note of several facts: (1) Carville's great success was getting Bill Clinton elected... 32 years ago; (2) It's a very different country and a very different Democratic Party today; and (3) He's often very wrong (for example, he predicted a comfortable Kamala Harris victory).
Yesterday, Carville was railing against the "problem" that cost the Democrats the election. He believes the party leadership is stuck in a bubble in Washington, that said leadership is pushing the wrong issues, and that "this identity sh** was a disaster."
We'll likely say more about this soon, but this is worthless analysis, in our view. Less than worthless, even, because it suggests to us that Carville can't separate Republican propaganda from actual Democratic messaging. How many times did Kamala Harris embrace identity-politics-type issues during the campaign? When did she talk about BLM, or defund the police, or women's sports, or any of that? She didn't do these things because she knows talking about these issues alienates centrist voters. The connection between Harris and trans rights was 99.9% a creation of Donald Trump's messaging, including $65 million in TV ads on the subject.
And that is the real problem here: The Republican propaganda apparatus is devastatingly effective. John Kerry was ruined by the swift boaters. Barack Obama's birth certificate did not stop him from being elected, but it did become deeply embedded in the right-wing psyche. Hillary Clinton's e-mails most certainly did stop HER from being elected. Joe Biden's age/infirmity did not derail him in 2020, but did do him in this year. And Harris' allegedly radical-pro-trans agenda hurt her badly this year.
As readers probably know by now, the House will have its first transgender member in Representative-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE). The Republican propaganda mill will do everything possible to make her the face of the Democratic Party, just as it has done with The Squad, and with Nancy Pelosi before that. This has nothing to do with party-wide Democratic wokeness, it's how the modern-day GOP works. And, as a sidebar, we really hope the Capitol Police agree to assign McBride a security detail, because she is likely to become an object of obsession for some people who are not mentally well.
We do not deny, incidentally, that Democrats need to be thinking about their messaging, and how well it connects with various constituencies. But that means something like "figure out how to better communicate the Party's ideas on kitchen table issues" and not "stop talking so much about the woke stuff," because the latter isn't actually happening, except with a few officeholders on the fringes, and a couple of Squad members who won't be back in January. The blue team also needs to be thinking about solutions for countering the GOP propaganda flamethrower (which is no small task). Carville's carping is, dare we say, out of touch, reactionary, and not terribly insightful.
However, it is surely true that Beshear/Cooper 2028 would be stronger than Pelosi/Ocasio-Cortez 2028. Until the Democrats figure out how to win back FDR's base, they probably should not run women or minorities or especially minority women for president (no matter how well they do and have done in the Senate and House or as governors). (Z)