Carville to Obama: time to panic!
James Carville has never been one for understatement. And although as a good Democrat he has supported Obama, there must have always been a disconnect between Obama’s cool, laid-back style and Carville’s natural tendency towards heat.
Now that things are going especially badly for Obama, Carville tries to light a fire under the president and tells him to fire people, indict people, and “make a case like a Democrat.”
I’m not quite sure what that latter means. But the whole thing is a cri de coeur, a scream of frustration and pain from a guy who cannot stand seeing all the hard-won Democratic gains squandered. One can hardly blame him.
Have you noticed how many Democrats have been carping at Obama during the last two years, telling him what they think he should be doing? I’ve never before seen a president given so much advice from the sidelines. But perhaps that’s because never before have there been such high expectations of a president with so little experience.
Sorry for saying this but watching James (“Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.” ) Carville squirm is simply delicious. I can’t imagine a more unpleasant person who isn’t actually living under a bridge.
I hope the current President is causing him to grind his teeth down every night as he drifts to a restless sleep pondering the heights of power that the left briefly had and how it is all being squandered by the utter incompetence of this child president. And the cherry on top is that like the Carter days, it will probably lead to another two generations of conservative leaning economic policies for this country.
I hope he chokes on every bite of it.
You’ll notice that Carville didn’t advise Obama to “acquit himself better,” or to “trumpet his convictions.”
That’s because in addressing Democrats, to avoid confusion one has to take care not to use terms such as “acquit” or “convictions.”
He’s too rigid to follow any advice that he doesn’t wholly agree with. I believe that is where so much of the left’s current frustration is coming from. At the same time, any strategic pivots will be attacked by the committed left. But the good news is while he remains incapable of doing anything, more and more people (on both sides) realize he is in way over his head. And to be honest, if he leaves office after one term with the nation and world in ruins he will feel accomplished — his long-term goal is to take the U.S. down a notch. He just fails to realize what the aftermath will be — near complete abandonment of left- wing, soft-socialist principals. At least in this country; at least for a while.
Democrats leaders must be pulling their hair out. They get the country to the nirvana of zero growth with diminishing wealth and then panic upon discovery that their supporters really only liked the altruistic way it sounded.
Those same people were advising Bush to fail, however, and actively went out of their way to sabotage things America had invested in.
Somebody out there pleeeeeze explain to me
-1- what Mary Matalin (whom I once really liked) can possibly see in James Carville, and
-2- how in blazes they can possibly get along?
As to -2-, I know political thought is not the whole of a marriage relationship; it can be extremely minor. But when that was what both did as a vocation, and when it at least appeared to me to be a major component of their very fibers, how in blazes can/do they manage to get along??
There appears to be a theme developing on the left:
If only the president were ideologically pure enough.
If he would only reaffirm his oath to Stalin-ism.
If he would just have a quick purge of the party.
If he would just send a few aids to the gulag.
Then EVERYTHING would be OK. Unicorns and rainbows would return. And utopia would be just around the next corner.
Obama’s fantasy that he was like Lenin came true!!!!!
The lumpen proletariat didn’t rise up for him either….
Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (1965)?
About “Sascha” Herzen by Soviet historian Martin Malia
Now who has kids named Sascha, and Malia?
Martin Malia. Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1965. ix + 486 pp.
Reviewed by David Burrow (Department of History, University of Wisconsin at Madison)
Martin Malia and the Birth of Russian Intellectual History
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4538
Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (1965)?
About “Sascha” Herzen by Soviet historian Martin Malia
Art, I rather doubt that Obama named his daughter “Sasha” in a reference to Herzen. If he’d had that kind of scholarship, he’d have realized that he was giving his daughter the diminutive of a masculine name, much like naming her “Bill.”
Unless, of course, he was carrying on the family tradition of giving the distaff side names from the spear side.
I say Obama should hire Carville and listen to him.
No better way to insure victory in 2012…….for the Republicans.
Carville doesn’t want to fix Social Security. Thinks more government spending is needed. Thinks frog marching bankers and Wall Street traders out in handcuffs is going to elicit confidence in the markets. Thinks raising taxes is going to help the economy. Thinks an energy policy based on the theory of man-made global warming is the way to go. Thinks being consistently pugnacious on those issues is the way to win voters. Yes, Obama needs Carville. Go James, go!
J.J. you just described every democrat talking head.
J. J. I’d like to see some perp walks on Wall Street. There’s some merit to the idea of showing the public that the rule of law will be followed there.
Y’know, just sayin’. Not that I agree with Carville, just that we could do worse things on Wall Street than to make a very public example of lawbreakers.
…on the other hand, Enron perp walks didn’t seem to accomplish much.
Occam:
Yep. I think that one picture shows Obama looks just like his “grandpa.” See the picture at the link below.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/another_look_at_obamas_origins.html
The interesting thing about the collection of Obama pictures is how small it is.
http://reddy-sri.blogspot.com/2008/11/barak-obama-childhood.html
Perp walks should commence with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
Tesh,
Being greedy and stupid about leverage is not against the law. If it was, we wouldn’t have enough jails to hold the prisoners. What would be nice would be if these people were to become pariahs – unable to ever work again in the financial world. That, of course, is a matter for corperate governance reform. Right now that is not too high on the list of priorities, but it should be.
The interesting thing about the collection of Obama pictures is how small it is.
Apparently those who created his legend were a bit lazy.
@J. J.
You’re right. I’m not talking about greedy people. I’m talking about those who commit fraud. I think greedy people have a busted moral compass, but they aren’t committing a crime against the law of the land. If the point is to encourage confidence in the market, it has to be known as a place where investing is only as risky as business ventures, the laws have to be enforced, that’s all.
Occam. Spear side. Haven’t heard that in years. Guess it’s okay to be kind of precious about women and women’s place in the household.
But you’ll note the guys don’t get plow side, ax side, fishing net side, blacksmith hammer side. And, swords being expensive “noble” weapons, the ordinary guy had better be good with a spear or the distaff side disappears into slavery….
Anyway, not the sort of thing we want to think about, is it?
1. I’m adding a lot of salt to Carville’s Cajun cookin’.
The advantages of incumbency in the modern era are so great that it takes a virtually perfect storm to dislodge a sitting President: overt national distress and a strong challenger and, perhaps, a disruptive wild card like Ross Perot. Maybe that confluence of factors is underway, or maybe not.
2. Intrade currently rates Obama’s reelection prospects as a tossup, which feels plausible to me. IMO had Obama governed successfully, he’d have at least a 70% chance of reelection; in fact, I’ll say 80%. I ascribe the difference to Obama’s major incompetence; in that sense, Carville’s alarmism is correct. However, failure in governance does not necessarily imply failure at the polls.
Obama is vulnerable. Obama is not beyond a point of no return.
MJR: I think the answer is that they have much more in common with each other than they do with most people. They share an intensity, a boldness, a rabid interest in politics and political shenanigans, a bulldog nature, and the courage of their convictions.
I heard Carville being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN this afternoon. When Carville said he wanted Obama to, in short, panic, fire his economic team, and start indicting people, Blizter tried to press him for names on who should be indicted.
Carville started sputtering about all the things going wrong with the economy and said you couldn’t have all those things happening without someone doing their jobs so badly they deserved indicting.
Hard to avoid the impression he was trying desperately hard to find someone besides Obama to blame. Of course, when referring to the Presidency, indict isn’t exactly the word …
What the H is the matter with Carville? The Dems have succeeded in achieving their agenda beyond their wildest dreams. Obama’s failure is that the public doesn’t like it? Strikes me as ‘Love the sin, hate the sinner.”
gs:
“Obama is vulnerable. Obama is not beyond a point of no return.”
Barack has to turn back to save his presidency. He has to return to centrist policies, stop the insane spending, dump Obamacare, roll back his 81,000+ new pages of regulations, unblock the energy permitting process, etc.
He has no intention of turning back, and he is past the point of electability unless he does so. Barring a total melt down of the Republican candidate, Obama is done.
Well, we now have a new resource in the war against all those eevil “unapproved” thoughts, wrecking, threats to “democratic centralism,” and tendencies to “rightist deviationism”, etc. etc.; ATTACKWATCH.COM (see a very funny parody of this site here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XYKRokgX00) .
This new Obama administration website resembles nothing so much as the “official line” memos that used to be issued–I believe weekly–to each official propagandist/political officer in the old U.S.S.R., so that they could tell the masses what was officially “true and correct,” what ideas it was permissible to hold, and what it was permissible to think and say, with these not “getting the message” given free trips to Siberia.
So, for convenience sake and to stop useless and perhaps dangerous questioning of Obama, authority, and official “reality,” we now have the “current line”; the list of officially approved thoughts we are allowed to hold and the sentiments we are allowed to express.
Thus, for instance, we are told that “Obama was born in the United States and is a U.S. citizen, period.”
What Carville said, and where the focus really ought to be:
“As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.”
uncleFred Says:
gs: “Obama is vulnerable. Obama is not beyond a point of no return.”
…
…He has no intention of turning back, and he is past the point of electability unless he does so. Barring a total melt down of the Republican candidate, Obama is done.
1. A skeptic might interpret the two phrases I boldfaced as escape clauses.
2. For the three incumbent Presidents–Ford, Carter, Bush 41–whose reelection efforts I saw fail, the outcomes were in doubt well into the campaign.
3. The Moderate Voice’s Joe Gandelman titles his post, “Gallup Poll: Obama Re-Election Now Far From A Shoo In”. That’s in the ball park afaic, though shaded too favorably for Obama. (NB: I’m quoting the TMV site, not recommending it.)
I thought the attack watch site was a joke until i clicked on it. This President and these times are getting really bizzare.
I agree with Don Carlos. Savvy veteran Carville has indicated promising targets for Democrat attack ads.
To put it in terms of gamesmanship: The Democrats should hire concern trolls to write those ads. They should use the tone of sweet reason to scare the dickens out of American voters.
Why assume that Carville has Obama’s interests at heart? Carville is deeply involved with the Clintons. One could read this as contributing to a general feeling that Obama is doomed, so the Dems need to find a way to fall back on Hillary in 2012.