What are you going to do, fire me? On an eighty-thousand dollar day? And it ain’t even noon yet!
By Look, when it comes to party-establishment v. netroots I’m squarely in the “it’s not a zero-sum game” camp. I even think that Harold Ford is probably a pretty good option for DNC chair eventually. [Several months later edit–whew, that was a howler. My apologies. –SL] But, seriously, what exactly is Carville doing here? How much better could the Dems have done? If not for Howard Dean they would have given $12 million to Tammy Duckworth? Does he think this is viable?
Anyway, I think this is a good time to return to this gem from Carville, discussing vice-presidential options in 2000:
By choosing former Georgia governor Zell Miller as his running mate, Al Gore could add intellectual brainpower, rhetorical firepower, and lots of plain old populist piss-and-vinegar to this staid election.
[…]
Zell Miller is also a world-class campaigner and orator. His keynote address to the 1992 Democratic convention ranks with Barbara Jordan’s and Mario Cuomo’s as one of the finest examples of powerful rhetoric and partisan passion.
At a time when politics seems moribund, Zell would bring energy. When people are looking for heroes, Zell’s the real thing. And when Democrats need someone who’s not afraid to open up a can of whupass on the radical right [on behalf, I think you mean–ed.], they need look no further than Zell Miller.
Yeah, that would have been great. Can someone remind me why I’m supposed to care about James Carville’s views of Democratic strategy in 2006 again?
But now this will be conventional wisdom — tacitly accepted everywhere and never examined — that Dean is in trouble, that a major faction of the Democratic Party wants Dean out as DNC Chair, that there is a war among various Democratic factions over Dean.
This will all now be “fact” even though Carville has no constituency whatsoever, represents nobody, has no way to oust Dean, and is simply venting long-standing animosity he has towards the insurgent, anti-establishment Dean (who, unlike an envious Carville, actually represents and is supported by large numbers of people). But Carville’s one comment, to lazy reporters, means now that there is some major tension among “Democrats” and that some imagined “jury” is still out on Howard Dean. All of that is based on nothing.