James Carville: Bad Messenger for his boiler-plate book
James Carville is that sort of partisan hack who I don’t think really have much worth saying outside of war stories from the 1992 Clinton Campaign. But he has a new quickie little paperback book out. This one not co-written with his fellow Clintonite and talking head Paul Begala. It shows him on the cover photo-shopped with the man he tried to defeat in that last Democratic Primary — Barack Obama. In the tradition of Hugh Hewitt’s triumphantlist Republican book “Painting the Map Red“, Carville brings us the triumphantlist Democratic book, “40 More Years“.
Hewitt, it appears, has poked back down into the rubble to write a book on Rebuilding his Party. Building on his previous work, I suppose.
Read Carville at your own risk. I will go ahead and explain his “40 Years” basis. Political Realignments through history. Jefferson’s party won 7 elections against his opponent party’s 0 victories between 1800 and 1824. Jackson’s party won 6 elections against his opponent’s party’s 2 victories between 1828 and 1856. Lincoln’s party won 7 elections against his opponent’s party’s 2 victories between 1860 and 1892. McKinley’s party won 7 elections against his opponent’s party’s 2 victories between 1896 and 1928. Roosevelt’s party won 7 versus his opponent’s party’s 2 victories between 1932 and 1964. And Nixon’s party won 7 victories versus his opponent’s party’s 3 victories between 1968 and 2004.
The minority parties in these various time periods had to scramble the electorate somehow or other in order to win an election. The two Whig victories came with War heroes and the second Whig party victory came without a party platform — the vice-president that ended up president after the Whig President’s death tended to stray afield from Whig philosophy and antagonized the Whig Party faithful. The Eisenhower victory was again a congenial consensus quasi-partisan figure. The Democrats in the age of Nixon were Southerners needed to tug at the once Democratic south back in their direction. A sign of the struggle is shown in that it took two southerners to pull off the feat in 1992, where one Southerner served the purpose in 1976. At the same time, Truman in 1948 could pull out a victory by force of largely partisan appeals of pulling together their party’s coalition, as Bush could in 2004. Dewey, Nixon in 1960, and Kerry in 2004 did not have this luxury, and suffered messaging problems as a result of the dilemma.
A telling fact with 2008 is that two Northeasterners from solidly Blue states won the election for the Democrats, whereas the coalition between 1932 and 164 had Roosevelt run with the Southern Garner, than the border-state Truman, and Kennedy run with the Texan Johnson — and the era of the Democratic Minority (in terms of presidential politics) that followed forced Southerners on the ticket.
Keep in mind that at all times, the fissures exist that show both how the party’s alignment is falling apart, and how the next one might be born. Johnson undid his current Democratic coalition and sparked the next.
So, here’s what makes Carville a bad messenger for what’s something of boil-plate “Emerging Democratic Party Majority” message. He worked to scramble together Democratic victories under the previous epoch. The two figures he was instrumental in bringing to prominence in the United States are Bill Clinton and Zell Miller. Maybe we’ve entered an era where the Democratic Party is going to win 7 out of 9 presidential elections, or 7 out of 10, and maybe we haven’t, but it’ll be with something other than Zell Miller and with different entries in the minority Republican’s South.