As usual, Bernie is spot on.
And, as usual, Carville is a grifting neoliberal coasting on winning one election against an unpopular president 32 years ago.
Everytime I see him on TV he’s spouting nonsense about shit no one in the real world cares about. Wish they’d quit putting that irrelevant SOB in front of a camera
Bro, let’s try throwing away one more principle, bro. Just one more. Bro, one, please, one more, bro. Just one. Then we’ll get votes again. Bro. Just one, bro. One principle. Bro.
I saw a lot of people saying it was worth not voting for Kamala, because it would “teach the democrats a lesson”. They said “If we refuse to vote for them, they’ll have to step up their game!”
Are you people happy? Do you think the Democrats are losing more right now than America’s trans people, or the Ukrainians, or the Gazans are? Do you think playing Chicken with fascism was worth it?
Give it a break. Do you see Bernie out there doing this shit?
Maybe take his lead and look to the future instead of the past.
“Let the bus continue to accelerate off the cliff, then the Republican voters will be mad at the driver!” says the corporat Dems sitting on the bus.
I would add, says the corporate Dems, sitting on the bus with a parachute made of money.
James Carville is a person nobody should take advice from ever again.
Carville needs to ‘strategically retreat’ back into whatever Louisiana snake hole he slithered out of.
I thought it was the ark of the covenant.
I dont think people give early family guy enough credit for shitting on conservatives
Speaking of, If you don’t watch American Dad I’d highly recommend. Been my favorite show from MacFarlane for a while now.
I love all of Seth’s stuff honestly, I started watching The Orville recently and its fantastic. American dad is good too.
The Ollie North song lives rent free in my head.
Cajun style
Carville took a governor from a backwater state and got him into the Whitehouse despite his opponent being one of the most popular Presidents at the time.
Carville isn’t stupid he’s just wrong in this case
You’re, right he did. In 1992.
As far as I can tell, his political strategy has not evolved even a little over the past 3 decades, as he continues to push unpopular ‘compromise candidates’ and continues to tell people to ‘sit down and shut up’ whenever they suggest maybe the Democrats should chase some reforms that benefit the working class rather than simply appeasing the Wall Street paymasters.
I don’t know if stubbornly sticking to the same failing strategy for 30 years makes you ‘stupid’, but it certainly doesn’t make you smart.
To add to that, even though he helped get Clinton elected, Clinton’s main accomplishment was making the Democrats more useless to the people as a result. Third way Democrats have been an abysmal failure from a progress perspective. Some of Clinton’s “main accomplishments” were helping demolish the welfare state, and increasing the incarceration rate.
Obama, in retrospect, can be viewed as a third-way Democrat as well, and the primary policy accomplishment his presidency produced is a Republican think-tanked, half-measure healthcare policy that was largely a gift to the insurance companies even at the onset and has since been left out in the field to be continually picked at by vultures.
I was wondering this morning why Democrats don’t seem to really have effective policy think-tanks like the Republicans do and then I thought maybe they just use the same ones.
Policy think-tanks cost money. Since the owner class has all the money, all the think-tanks serve the owner class.
Are you being serious? There are absolutely democrat leaning think tanks.
This:
all the think-tanks serve the owner class.
and this:
There are absolutely democrat leaning think tanks.
aren’t the contradiction that you think they are.
You need to pay closer attention to who controlled Congress under Clinton. Most of what you list as Clinton’s accomplishments were bills introduced by a conservative run Congress.
If you are unaware of what the democratic think tanks are you should address that.
Sure, he had a congress of the opposite party for some / most of his terms. You know who else had that? Nearly every president ever elected to office.
It makes it ever the more important to use what little time you have to push your agenda through, to veto things you disagree with, and sit your court appointees.
EDIT:
I also realized I left this “point” unaddressed:
If you are unaware of what the democratic think tanks are you should address that.
Dude, I’ve been a bigger political news person for 20+ years than most people bother being. I can name organizations like “the Heritage Foundation” and the “Cato Institute” without a reference. You know why? Because these think-tanks are effective. Note my original comment. I said “effective policy think-tanks”. Would you consider democratic think tanks effective when Obama with a sweeping mandate from the people unlike anything else I’ve seen in my lifetime wound up producing a copycat plan of a Republican governor?
Sure, they may exist, but if they do they’re not what I’d term “effective” and me looking up their names isn’t going to make them that way.
That isn’t true? Post WW-II to 1992 it was controlled by the democrats.
Think about where Clinton getting elected for the first time falls on that chart, vs. where we are now.
What relevance does this have to James Carville?
Worth noting almost the totality of the increase of productivity from the late 1970s- present are tied to technological improvements in the factory. The worker hasn’t become more productive the machines have which is why it is important for the workers to own the means of production as it avoids this payment issue.
The relevancy it has is his strategy was successful when the US was still riding on the coattails of the New Deal and Great Society and was still perceived as being relatively egalitarian. But as inequality and worker exploitation got worse and worse and worse and worse AND WORSE, electing third-way neoliberal fuckwads doesn’t work quite so well anymore!
That’s a massive stretch given these things happened 14 years before Carville was running Clinton’s campaign.
The point is not that the problem started with Clinton (because it obviously didn’t); the point is that Clinton running on “third way” neoliberalism was still a viable strategy because the effects weren’t being widely felt yet.
Dude hasn’t been correct about how to win elections since 30 years ago, and hasn’t been correct about policy ever.
And then he won because he was running Bill “I don’t literally hate black and gay people” Clinton against a proven liar who tanked the economy, in an America that cared about those things.
Also Ross Perot with a steel chair
The Democrats seem to have come up with two strategies so far: either (1) wait and hope someone does something, or (2) play dead and hope someone does something. Truly inspiring leadership.
You forgot collect donations
I don’t usually take advice from fucking fossils. Sanders is the exception.
Seriously, Carville is fucking 80, hasn’t he been myopically dictating the direction of this useless fucking party long enough?
One of the main architects of the status quo democrats thinks democrats need to respond to getting stomped by maintaining the status quo? Color me shocked.
The Democrat Party and the Republican Party have never been at odds in their position that their political donors should run the government.
The parties have largely just been the vehicles for turning corruption into legislation. Now that open corruption is legal, there’s no need to upset the cart, the Democrats are just waiting their turn.
Sanders channels Lincoln while Carville channels a possum—guess which inspires voters?
🐱🐱🐱🐱
I’m a little out of the loop, what are all the cat faces in the comments about?
The cat emojis represent a playful ranking system inspired by “MeowMeowBeanz” from Community.
Short clip of the episode: https://youtu.be/CI4kiPaKfAE
This is such a silly callback, I love it.
😺 😺 😺 😺 😺
Lol love it, though I’d like to see the conclusion of the old guy’s rant so I’m only going to give it 4/5 meowmeowbeanz.
🐱 🐱 🐱 🐱
“What we have right now in Washington, let me be very clear, is a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class.”
Get some Bernie
The trees the New York Times is printed on wishes they were toilet paper instead.
After the 2016 election, until the 2024 election, the Democrats won every election of every National political body except the House in 2022. It was a solid run electorally.
You can complain about what those political bodies accomplished, but not that they didn’t win.
Yeah they did well in 2018 and 2020 when Trump was last in office. Not so well outside of the condition of Trump being demonstrably worse.
Carville is a DNC talking head moron and always has been. If we’re taking advice from that idiot we’re in even worse shape than we thought.
What’s Carnival smokin?
He probably smokes whatever the DNC tells him to.
Smack Pelosi out of her seat. Let AOC take over.
Democrats: … maybe if we do more neck exercises we can learn to stretch our necks more so that we can send our heads further into the hole in the ground we’ve been using
Why is our main advocate still ancient? Is there no one younger willing to take this fight?
AOC is the closest
Alas, AOC has two thing working against her that the centrists & the right will never get past: she has boobs.
She speaks to the working class. that’s all she needs
I wish that were enough.
The right just elected someone with boobs, homie
Moobs
Haha sexist joke so funny
Even if AOC being a woman was a problem (it’s not), it’s not something you can change. So how about we stop making sorry excuses and start posting news and memes about her as much as we did for Trump instead?
It’s not a joke. Too many American voters are completely put off by the idea of a woman for president. It’s stupid, it sucks, but it’s true. The patriarchy isn’t an imaginary construct.
Her being a woman is not a problem for me, or for you, or maybe not for anyone with any sort of common sense, but if centrists & right-wingers had common sense, they wouldn’t be centrist or right-wingers.
There are, but the media does not want to spread their message
The generation gap in leftist political figures is quite apparent, yes.
This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn’t vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.
Not saying there aren’t elements of fash in trumps admin, there obviously are; or that abstaining to vote was the correct strategy, I don’t believe it was, though uncommitteds and 3rd party voters shouldn’t be shamed for following their conscience
Just want to point out where these arguments actually originate, and where exactly they have lead. Maybe there is more to politics than handwringing and rending of garments about impending fascism – maybe politics is something you do and not something you think or, god forbid, repeat uncritically.
This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn’t vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.
Yeah, and he was correct. As we are literally witnessing in real time.
Whatever stupid bullshit the man said before or since isn’t relevant to the validity of that statement. I don’t care if Ted fucking Bundy said it, it would still be true.
That’s not how logic works. You don’t get to just completely ignore a premise because you don’t like a person who might have said it once.
That’s not the logic behind my statements, however logic has a beginning, middle and an end. It leads somewhere. Just letting you all know where a version of this logic leads, and it is the logic of the mainstream dems. I’m not able to articulate the whole case, but I can point to a case study.
You don’t have a monopoly on logic. In fact I guarantee you that I have studied more formal logic than most. The dems abandoned us years ago. I can’t say your logic is incorrect as you also haven’t described yours. You may be horrified to learn that we mostly agree, most likely.
But this goon represents exactly what is wrong with the dems: career political operators whose personal wealth is directly connected to their ability to run elections, and who have no incentive to win. In fact I could almost guarantee that your logic, or the logic of most regular working people, would be more sound than his. The incentives for dems are broken, the party is broken, time to move on and form a workers party. It’s time for a new logic that abandons these sickos who aren’t even that different from the republicans they pretend to oppose.
This guy was screaming and yelling about how Trump was a fascist, and if you didn’t vote democrat then that was equivalent to doing nothing in the face of fascism, or worse.
The headline names two guys. Which are you talking about.
Not saying there aren’t elements of fash in trumps admin, there obviously are
“elememts of” is massively underselling it.
or that abstaining to vote was the correct strategy, I don’t believe it was, though uncommitteds and 3rd party voters shouldn’t be shamed for following their conscience
The exasperation comes from the fact that from a historical and mathematical perspective, voting for the Democratic nominee in the general is the only way to not have a Republican win the race. And in spite of that reality slapping us in the face over and over again the 3rd party voters and non-voters won’t budge. They could stop the rightward slide of the Democratic party by just showing up en masse in the primaries.
I was talking about James Carville
just showing up
If you convince people the only thing they can do to oppose fascism is vote every 4 years, a position that is historically and objectively false – fascists don’t care about democracy – then dont act shocked when their mobilization is underwhelming.
Democratic party leaders were instructing volunteers to remove anyone from their lists who mentioned the Palestinian Genocide. They were intentionally not mobilizing the exact people you want to just mobilize.
Also, have you ever tried to mobilize a group to do political action? It ain’t easy, even when you aren’t tying your own hands behind your back
I’m not trying to undersell the threat of fascism, what is coming is scary and many people are already being harmed by these disgusting policies. But the most important thing I hope to stress is that it doesn’t matter what you call it, it matters what you do to fight it.
I was talking about James Carville
That was my assumption but the ambiguous wording combined with the headline implying the article being about Sanders left me unsure. Thanks for clarifying.
If you convince people the only thing they can do to oppose fascism is vote every 4 years, a position that is historically and objectively false – fascists don’t care about democracy – then dont act shocked when their mobilization is underwhelming.
I didn’t say that voting every 4 years was the only thing they could do though. I said “they could stop the rightward slide of the Democratic party by just showing up en masse in the primaries.”
Democratic party leaders were instructing volunteers to remove anyone from their lists who mentioned the Palestinian Genocide. They were intentionally not mobilizing the exact people you want to just mobilize. Also, have you ever tried to mobilize a group to do political action? It ain’t easy, even when you aren’t tying your own hands behind your back
See this is what I’m saying. The voters in question are waiting for the Democratic party to put a better candidate forward before they will vote for a Democratic nominee. But when there are enough of these voting-eligible people to split the vote and give the Republicans the win, then surely there’s enough of them to put a better candidate on the ballot without the party doing it for them.
I’ve posted in previous threads with sources … over 99% of the legislative offices around the country (state legislatures and US Congress) are held by either a Democratic or Republican nominee. And we are one presidential election away from it being 60 years since a 3rd party candidate received a single electoral vote. Ross Perot received just shy of 19% of the national popular vote in 1992 and received zero electoral votes. I’m not saying the Democratic party deserves every non-Republican vote, but the winner of over 99% of every race at the state and federal level will be won by either the Democratic nominee or the Republican nominee. Punishing the Democratic party in the general hasn’t done anything to move the party left, and we saw Bernie’s campaign in 2016 see the DNC adopt many of his campaign planks, and that led to more progressives running in and winning primaries. We see how well the threat of well financed primary campaign makes incumbents support an agenda. So clearly the primaries are where we should be applying pressure on the Democratic party.
Thanks for your input. I believe the Uncommitted movement was originally a movement to pressure Dems in the primaries, and I think that the result of that movement was that they couldn’t be moved left, at least not on the issue of Israel who is carrying out a genocide. So there were a lot of people who made the same political calculation as you did. This time, it didn’t seem to work. I am opposed to the idea that the mainstream of the dems even can be moved left, but I know a lot of people who hold out hope, and are showing up to try and make that happen.
There’s probably a lot that can be accomplished locally, to a certain extent. And while I remain skeptical I’m not going to like brow beat or sabotage someone who disagrees with me (unlike the democrats.) But to me, the dems represent the same class interests as the republicans, just maybe a different faction of that class. But I agree that we live in a real world with real existing social forces, and if we want to change things then we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The actual left doesn’t have the resources to deny reality like the republicans, and many democrats; we have to deal in hard and fast truths.
So I guess my strategy is to organize who I can on the far left, while others (like you maybe) organize on the center- left, and when things get bad enough that the mainstream of the democrats can no longer abide any positions to the left of Chuck Schumer, then you and I can come together to create that third party I hope for.
We call this the “dirty break” strategy, where we prepare for a split from the dems but in the mean time work within the existing framework to fight against the worst abuses of maga and the billionaire class, while trying to achieve progressive gains for workers
This comment was downvoted more than upvoted, but it hits the nail on the head. In fact, the final argument about politics needing to be done is exactly counter to the thing Bernie objects to: playing dead or doing nothing. How do people fail to get this point?
Wake up, dems. Your party has abandoned you. All signs from inside point at centrality and forcing out the Left.
You’d think I was trolling for how many down votes I got. It just goes to show that in the times we live, nothing is more controversial than the truth.
Also people get so upset when you tell them that politics is practical and not ideological. The bourgeois liberal mind can’t comprehend
