There were many excellent political strategists in America over the last century. But only two great ones.
They were Democrat James Carville and Republican Lee Atwater. Atwater tragically died at a young age in the early 1990s. But Carville is still around, a pundit for years now, dispensing solid political wisdom.
Remember, we’re not talking government or policy here, but politics. So ideological factors need not apply to anything other than as marketing ploys.
I actually had the opportunity, when I was a young political consultant myself in the mid-1990s, to have a drink with Carville and several top guns like him in DC. I knew one of them and he told he to sip my bourbon and shut up. I obeyed and listened to Carville give a tour de force on the upcoming 1996 election scenario. He nailed it.
He hasn’t lost his fast gun.
Carville recently told MSNBC, in regards to the current state of the Democratic Party, “I’m 75 years old, why am I here doing this? Because I’m scared to death, that’s why. Let’s get relevant here … all the Sanders people are taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn (failed Marxist head of the British Labour Party) the best…I don’t want to go down that path.”
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He continued, “We’ve got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult? Or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party? What we need is power, you understand? That’s what this is about. Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points.”
Absolutely spot on.
Will the Democrats listen?
No.
They are so in the thrall of the socialist left, as the Corbyn scene above indicates, that the Democratic Party has virtually become a political suicide cult, only excepting the fact that the more fashionable suicide cults usually have better uniforms.
If the Democrats continue the march down this path they could be looking at a Nixon 1972 or Reagan 1984 hammering at the polls in November. Now, far be it from us to get in the way of their political destruction.
But deep in my cynical psyche there still breathes a small hope that this nation could have a competent, sane, responsible center-left political party. If for nothing else but to keep the Republicans honest.
However, as Carville sees, the Democrats are going exactly in the opposite direction and it seems for the foreseeable future nothing will stop their lockstep march over a cliff.
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