Hillary Watch 2016: More pithiness from Mr. Carville

By Richard K. Barry

Maureen Dowd had a piece in The New York Times over the weekend in which James Carville gave one of those great quotes, this time about the fact that Hillary Clinton is certainly running for the presidency in 2016:
 

Running for president is like sex. No one ever did it once and forgot about it.

As I wrote a couple of days ago in the same context, Mr. Carville has a way of saying things. In this case, it's not a bad way to put it. 

Most people just can't walk away unless they can be convinced, absolutely convinced, it's over - that they can never do it again. No one could convince her of that because it's not true (and we're talking about a strong, credible, and very likely successful run for the presidency).

Like it or not, and I like it, she'll be back. 

One note to those Democrats who want a more leftish candidate: It ain't gonna happen. America doesn't do left, at least not in electoral politics. Hillary Clinton can win and keep the right-wing bastards at bay for another eight years. Take what you can get and forget what you can't have (or move to another country).

Hillary Watch 2016: James Carville supports a Clinton candidacy (big surprise)

By Richard K. Barry

A super PAC with the pithy name "Ready for Hillary" has been put together for the purpose of encouraging the former secretary of state to run for the presidency in 2016. According to The Washington Post, someone familiar with the group's outreach efforts said that James Carville will be assisting them by sending an e-mail encouraging others to get on board:

"He is the first of several heavy hitters who will be rolled out by Ready for Hillary PAC," the person said.

Carville, Bill Clinton's campaign manager in 1992 and a legend in the world of political campaigns, has indicated that he is not joining the super PAC in an official capacity but is happy to lend a hand:

"I'm not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she'd be – you know it all already," he says in the e-mail, which was shared with Post Politics. "But it isn't worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain't any gas in the tank — and that's why the work that Ready for Hillary PAC is doing is absolutely critical. We need to convert the hunger that's out there for Hillary's candidacy into a real grassroots organization."

Ah, that James Carville. He sure knows how to say stuff.

CNN pulls away from rock bottom; or, All hail Jeff Zucker!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Some notable changes at Jeff Zucker's CNN:

-- The odious Mary Matalin, formerly of Cheney's inner circle? Gone.

-- The annoying James Carville, her Democratic husband? Gone. (He's not all bad, but enough with the hyper-partisan hackery. How about some serious progressive commentators?)

-- The despicable Bill Bennett, pompous right-wing windbag? Gone.

-- The obnoxious Erick Erickson, bullying right-wing blowhard? Gone.

It almost makes me want to watch CNN again. Almost.

Maybe if they got rid of the supremely awful Gloria Borger as well.

It's Hillary, stupid!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

James Carville may not always seem to have his political wits about him, but I suspect he's pretty much right about what he said about Hillary Clinton's 2016 prospects yesterday on This Week: 

I don't know what she's going to do, but I do know this: The Democrats want her to run. And I don't just mean a lot of Democrats. I mean a whole lot of Democrats, like 90 percent across the country. We just want to win. We think she's the best person and shut it down. And that's across the board.

Which reminds me of something Richard and I were talking about recently, as he recounted in a "Hillary Watch" post last week:

Michael and I were... speculating about what will become of the Obama campaign machine, including personnel, in 2016 and who else might run for the Democrats if Hillary does. Would anyone of significance bother, and would it be a bad thing if no one did? Parties sometime say that so-called "coronations" for presidential nominations are unhealthy, but given how badly the Republican contenders beat each other up, it may not be an awful idea for the Democrats to know who their candidate is early on. 

Normally I'm against such coronations. I'd much rather let the democratic process play itself out. But presidential primaries these days aren't so much democratic processes as exercises in self-immolation exposing various establishment and base fault lines.

Read more »

How lucky is Barack Obama? Very lucky

By Richard K. Barry

We have been so busy pointing to the utter incompetence of the GOP presidential field or marvelling at the radical social conservatism coming from some of them and how toxic that would be in the general election that we may not have sufficiently considered the other side of the equation. By that I mean the fact that President Barack Obama must consider himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth, to borrow a phrase.

I mean, the economy is still weak and, even though Obama didn't start the fire, he could easily be blamed for not putting it out fast enough, as unfair as that may be. But that's politics. You play the hand you're dealt and are judged accordingly.

While I would never have necessarily said Obama was going to be the underdog in 2012, the only way he might have been favoured, in my view, would be if the economy moved off centre stage either because it was improving or because the other guys foolishly decided to focus on something else or even because opposition candidates so lacked basic political skill that the focus of the campaign would be on each of them, and the eventual nominee, instead of the economy.

Well, guess what? The economy may be improving slightly but, perhaps more importantly, the other guys are talking about restricting the accessibility of birth control or whether or not women should be in the workplace or the extent to which the devil has infiltrated American institutions among other crazy things. Okay, only Rick Santorum is talking about these things, but it's pretty much blocking out the stuff Republicans should be talking about and setting the agenda in a very destructive way for them.

The other piece, of course, is that the GOP field is so weak that even with the economy in the shape it's in, they don't have a credible delivery system to carry the message. So, they're off message, and even when they're on message they're screwing up because the supposed front-runner is a rich guy so out of touch with the lives of most Americans that he's a walking, talking billboard for the Democrats' key message, i.e., Republicans are the party of privilege, who want to keep the middle class down.

Democratic strategist, James Carville, always good for a quote, was being interviewed on the Imus in the Morning radio program recently, and told Don Imus, apropos of all this, that though it was possible Obama could lose the election because of an event, he would not lose it because of a Republican candidate. Carville, an experienced political hand, knows that in politics things can go wrong, but he doesn't think there is a Republican strong enough to beat Obama on merit.

As he said:

Right now, things are starting to perk up a little bit. Who knows? This is the — no Republican can beat Obama. Events can beat Obama. He’s not going to get beat by a Republican. Now events could come in and cause him to lose the election. But that’s it right now. That was not the case three months ago.

And the quotable quote?

You know what, he is — if this president, if I had anything in the world I would love to do? I would love to go to Las Vegas and stand by him at a craps table. ‘Mr. President, you just throw the dice. I’ve got my money on every roll.' He’s a lucky, lucky, lucky guy.

You can find the full clip here.

James Carville is no fool and he is clearly hedging his bets because anything can happen in politics. But who saw the GOP screwing up this much when this all started?

The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and, as Carville taught us all in 1992, "It's the economy, stupid."

It's hard to believe anyone could fail to grasp that these days.

Yes, Barack Obama is a very lucky man.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Four things I think I know about politics

By R.K. Barry

There are four things about politics that I have learned over the years. There may be more, but these are the ones I am thinking about today.

None of them are original, but they are all, I believe, important. I am also reasonably sure they are obvious to anyone who cares to pay attention.

The first one I believe comes from legendary Democratic strategist James Carville and it concerns the relative lack of interest most people have in politics. It's about political messaging and it goes like this: "When you want voters to know something about your position on an issue or about your platform, you first have to tell them what that thing is and then tell them again and finally tell them you told them. About the moment when you are absolutely sick and tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again, some people will start to listen."

The second is the sad observation that no matter how stupid or untenable a statement, someone, probably many people, will believe and repeat it. They may believe the idiotic statement because they are predisposed to believe it or it might be that they think, foolishly, that anything that has been picked up by the media might have some truth to it. And, what's more, most people like to have something to say at the water cooler or wherever it is they converse with other human beings. Most of us do like to think that we are somewhat well-informed or at least not clueless. I can't say how many times I have heard someone opine that despite what most people believe about "x," they have also heard that "y" could be true. Think here about climate change, birtherism, Obama's religion. Put it out there and someone will repeat it. I'm not counselling dishonestly, only what can happen.

The third thing is that political campaigns matter because that's when a lot of people who are generally only vaguely interested in politics, if at all, start to pay attention. As for point #1, during campaigns all your telling and re-telling may finally start to stick with people. And as for point #2, by the time things get serious there is a lot of bad information that has already become part of the landscape for all sorts of nefarious or just ignorant reasons.

So here is my fourth point, which may only be a corollary of points above but it's this: those of us concerned about the truth should never weary of saying the same things over and over again -- the same things that may have become tiresome and obvious to us -- because there will come a time when people start to pay attention and you don't want the purveyors of bullshit to have a leg up when things get real.

More than anything, politics is a battle of attrition. Let's just make sure that our truth outlasts their lies.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)