James Carville is wrong again

James Political Hack Carville said on MSDNC that Bernie's strategy cannot win.

JAMES CARVILLE: First of all, I -- I won't mention names so I don't get any number of calls from panicked congressional incumbents. I know what's happening out there, I got a real good idea. The entire theory that by expanding the electorate is a -- increasing turnout so you can win an election is similar to a climate denial. When people say that, they're as stupid to a political scientist as a climate denier is to an atmospheric scientist.

If you want to vote for Bernie Sanders because you feel good about his program, you don't like the banks on Wall Street or you don't like pharmaceuticals, that's legitimate, I understand that. If you're voting for him because you think he'll win the election, politically, you're a fool. And that's just a fact. It's no denying it, there's so much political science, so much research on this that it is not even a debatable question.

Who am I to doubt Carville?
So I did a quick search and found this.

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What research was Carville referring to exactly?
You want to know who won by expanding the electorate? FDR.

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You want to know who shrank the electorate? Clinton.

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The difference is that under FDR's expanded electorate the Dems controlled Congress for nearly 50 years, while Clinton lost Congress.
So can Bernie succeed in expanding the electorate?
Check out young voters in 2018 and their overall impact.

Among 18- to 29-year-olds, voter turnout went from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018, the largest percentage point increase for any age group — a 79 percent jump.

voters.jpg

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I thought Carville was being used as example on how to do proper embalming. These people are making up or repeating the same bullshit now. Expand the base? Ha ha, now pay me some money.

First it was Bernie cannot win any primaries and his oppenents are better, etc. I happened to accidently see this clip, and decided to view it. Looks like the establishment is now conceding Bernie will get the most delegates, but that he is not electible. Rahm pretty much arguing that okay to deny Bernie nomination.

Man, but glad to see so many dislikes on this clip. At least Christie understands that denying Bernie the nomination will shatter the party (looked like George and Rahm wanted to say no it won't).

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26 users have voted.

Carville's clock is stopped on wrong. Of course I did just spend time dissecting David Brooks, so I have no room to argue.

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19 users have voted.

@konondrum is a sundial, and it's always dark where he dwells.

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26 users have voted.

Orwell: Where's the omelette?

OzoneTom's picture

@jim p

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15 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

I'd like to see him explain this.

Warren has shown her true colors. She has no path to win and is just in it to keep Bernie from winning. Drop out Warren is going viral.

Hey how many times during the last 3 years were you told Hillary won by 3 million more votes than Trump? But now they don't want to admit that Bernie's getting more votes than anyone else. Oh no they are focusing on the delegate count. Hypocrites.

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36 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg American voters are a bunch of fools. Only Carville and the rest of the democratic elite know what's best. After all they put Hillary Clinton in the White House last election...if it weren't for Susan Sarandon and that awful Bernie Sanders and his Bros, and Putin...and Ralph Nader!!

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23 users have voted.
Shahryar's picture

@snoopydawg

https://www.huffpost.com/elections

Bernie at 47.1% with 87.5% counted. Biden in 2nd with 20.9%, Pete 3rd 13.6%. Below the 15% mark for Pete. So that "razor thin margin between 2nd and 3rd" that Pete and his people are touting is not razor thin at all and, of course, Pete is closer to 4th place Warren (9.7%) than to 2nd.

Somebody didn't like what I wrote on Facebook today. I wrote:

Not so funny that the same people who are critical of what they perceive to be attacks on Democrats by "Bernie Bros" are the same ones now being hysterically anti Bernie.

The people who blame Bernie for Hillary's loss because they think he was too negative about her in 2016 are now doing exactly what they accused him of....

and she wrote:

FWIW, that entire first paragraph ("what they perceive to be", "Bernie Bros" in quotes, "hysterically") shows a profound contempt towards people who are way more likely to be politically aligned with Bernie in the long run than not. It's not helpful and it's not helping Bernie as a candidate to have that attitude.

Is there a less insulting way to make this same point? I would hope there is.

I thought I was being super polite!

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@Shahryar
filed an objection to the release more results. What a freaking weasel.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Shahryar

The people who blame Bernie for Hillary's loss because they think he was too negative about her in 2016 are now doing exactly what they accused him of....

shows a profound contempt towards..

This is like that comment I posted last night about people expecting Bernie's supporters to just keep taking everyone else's crap. It's not my responsibility to get people to vote for any candidate and if someone is mean to me online I don't see how that would make me change my vote.

"I used to support Bernie because I want the things he's running on, but now that you've been mean to me I don't want them anymore."

Dumbest comeback in history.

.

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19 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg it's 47.1% v. 44.3%. They'll have add Amy (with her 3.9%) to get the numbers to support the bs story they want to tell.

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Shahryar's picture

@Marie

but now it's clear what side Liz is on

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But pretending that you know and actually knowing are different matters. Carville is just one more asshole in a long line of assholes that we all know of that don't know shit, but pretend they do. The cable news shows are chock full of them, as are a couple of fake liberal websites.

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23 users have voted.
Bollox Ref's picture

if Carville's bald bonce was used as a bowling ball.

What a hack. He needs to be put out to pasture.

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20 users have voted.

Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Raggedy Ann's picture

shows the pure desperation of these hacks. THIS is how afraid they are of a Sanders presidency. Suck it, people. We've been sucking it for a long time.

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25 users have voted.

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

@Raggedy Ann
Something about “Embrace the Suck”...

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explicitly being paid to be wrong.

think you could handle it?

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Lily O Lady's picture

shit sandwiches, the official sandwich of the “Democratic” Party.

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17 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Voting Age Population, continues to increase, the potential electorate increases as well.

The lowest voter turnout rate was in 1996 at 49.0%. However, 1988 and 2000 were only slightly better at 50.3%. Odd since turnout generally dips when an incumbent is seeking re-election and rises when it's an open seat election. What '88 and '00 shared was the incumbent party going for a third term with the incumbent VP.

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5 users have voted.

@Marie was that '88 and '00 both involved a Bush on the ballot.

On the voters, I understand about 92m eligible voters failed to go to the polls in 2016. That's quite a large group to pick off to your advantage.

True, a lot are not gettable -- gone Timothy Leary, not interested/don't care about politics, too otherwise preoccupied with just surviving, etc. But many are there for the picking, if only they had a candidate, a ticket that excited them. And maybe a solid GOTV operation that didn't give up on them.

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8 users have voted.

@wokkamile on the ballot. Unfortunately, Dukakis was such a dreadful nomination that the Bush beat him by 315 electoral college votes (426 v. 111) and 7.8% in the national popular vote. That's always seemed to me to be the far worse than the McGovern loss because 1) Democratic elites were with Dukakis and totally undermined McGovern and 2) Dukakis ran in an open seat election when the public had soured on the incumbent Republican POTUS and McGovern ran against an incumbent before all his dirty deeds were public knowledge.

Gore actually beat the second Bush. That was despite the MSM hostility and his shortage of campaign funds. But I will never be convinced that the DP poobahs ever intended for Gore to win; they wanted another Clinton back in the WH asap. The difference in responses by the DP elites to 2000 (a verifiable stolen election) and 2016 (a legitimate loss) couldn't be starker and reinforces my conjecture about 2000.

The 2016 turnout was quite respectable at 55.7%. A 7.6 million increase over 2012, but that increase was 66& men and 33% women.

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10 users have voted.

Not saying they liked it, but that they were instructed to let it go.

@Marie

Gore actually beat the second Bush. That was despite the MSM hostility and his shortage of campaign funds. But I will never be convinced that the DP poobahs ever intended for Gore to win; they wanted another Clinton back in the WH asap.

And this is plenty of proof for me :

The difference in responses by the DP elites to 2000 (a verifiable stolen election) and 2016 (a legitimate loss) couldn't be starker and reinforces my conjecture about 2000.

Also, I don't remember where Gore was publicly on climate change in 2000. But consider the DP lack of urgency about climate change even now when the planet is on fire. I assume that they would have actively fought any attempt to reign in the fossil fuel industry back then.

A larger point in all of this is that the Democrat establishment feels entitled to consult with their wealthy donors, then dictate the nominee. Since the wealthy donors give to both parties there's good reason to suspect that the Dems, Repubs, and wealthy donors are working together as a group to choose the President. This would pefectly explain the total meltdown when an outsider like Trump or Bernie prevails when it was someone else's turn to win.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@entrepreneur

concerned about climate change. IMO, that’s why he had to go down. That and his promise to put Social Security funds in a “lock-box.”

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady

He chaired climate change hearing while he was in the House. "Earth in the Balance - " was published in June 1992 before Clinton selected him in July. Negotiated the Kyoto Protocol which BC declined to submit to Congress for ratification.

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@Lily O Lady different take on 2000 and 2016, and 2004. Gore wasn't a victim of the DP or any notion of party passivity in order to wait for a better deal with another Clinton (this does not make a lot of sense). He lost, officially in the EC, b/c he ran a defensive, lousy campaign -- overly defensive about BC, defensive and timid on global warming, defensive about just about everything else while at the same time failing to go after the hapless Shrub and his ignorance about the fed govt and many other things. Gore acknowledged later in a private with BC that he made a major mistake, lost the election, from not embracing Clinton and using him more effectively in the campaign.

Recall too this was still the period of deep timidity for a centrist DP which had little or no progressive wing to keep them honest, move the discussion leftward, and also provide some political cover for the nominee. It was the era of third-way Dem politics, when timid souls like Tom Daschle and Ed Rendell held major positions of power. And on Gore specifically, he was temperamentally inclined to always act in establishment-approved ways. Just look at the top people advising him --Warren Christopher, Shrum, and Tipper -- and who he named as his VP pick. This was a guy who thought he was radically going "outside the box" with a neocon Demican Republicrat who happened to be Jewish. (As a two-fer, Gore intended the pick also to be a big FU to Bill Clinton.)

As for 2016, I'm not entirely certain now that Hillary didn't also win in the EC. According to a recent small book from T Hartmann (see pgs 92-3), the exit polls in FL, NC, PN, and WI showed HRC winning those states. But when the official count came in, it showed a "red shift" from 2.5% (FL) to 5.9% (NC) in favor of Trump.

TH notes that elsewhere the exits were in synch with the official vote and that generally in states that didn't have a Repub as sec'y of state, there has never been such a reported red shift variance. In 2004 for instance in OH, with a Repub SoS, there was again the great variance of the exit poll showing a strong JK win (and nationally the exits showed a JK win by several million votes) while the final count came in showing Junior winning.

There's your possible conspiracy, election theft, and not some highly speculative and not very logical conjecture about the DP thwarting Gore or Kerry, or those 2 taking a dive. Well, they wimped out in the end not b/c they knew they were expected to take one for the team, but b/c they were both timid establishment types not inclined to go against the established norms of not challenging election results. You swallow your blatant election theft, or whatever it was, and you slink away quietly -- that was the message they got from the party and media establishment. Gore and Kerry were never going to offer much resistance to this directive.

My two cents on these previous elections.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@wokkamile

dog-piled on Gore, ridiculing his “lock-box” comments and complaining so much about his “wooden” demeanor that Gore embraced Tipper and kissed her passionately on stage. With friends like that who needed enemies.

Meanwhile, Dubya was depicted as hard working with sleeves rolled up, glad-handing the crowd. If it wasn’t an MSM hit-job on Gore, it sure looked like it!

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady lockstep MSM campaign against Gore and in favor of Shrub. Very blatant. So blatant, and effective, Gore needed to step up and call it out plain. Just sitting back and taking the constant pummeling was always going to end up like Dukakis. He needed to fight back. Even more than his former bud Bill Clinton did in 1992 against the media and against Poppy in the general, when the Bush camp was launching McCarthyite smears against him.

On the Tipper kiss at the convo, that was actually all about Al showing the world what a loyal spouse he was, in contrast to you know who. Another way that Gore showed disloyalty to his boss.

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@wokkamile
including all of Gore's foot-faults (and they were many) in his 2000 campaign; they are part of the picture puzzle. Also can't omit that it's very difficult for both parties to get a third WH term.

Campaign foot-faults (and all campaigns make them) by the loser are always retrospectively magnified, in part because the public sees those in real time and therefore, it's easy pickings. ie. Dukakis on a tank. But more generally, a party goes to bat for its loser when the winning opponent had publicly played dirty. ie GHW Bush's Willie Horton. Don't recall the DP doing that for Gore during his campaign or later. (Both Bushes called Gore Ozone Man.) They didn't for Gore and were telling him to just go away before FL was reconciled. That to me is a big tell.

Today, three years on, DP PTB remain in denial and continue to bleat on about non-existent Russia/Putin interference as to why HRC legitimately lost to a nincompoop. Gore legitimately beat his nincompoop opponent despite the massive election cheating in FL and DP PTB have never done more than shrug.

We rarely get a direct peak into the intra- and inter-party behind-the-scenes and inter-party and covert machinations and maneuvers. Neither during nor after an election. While careful observation during the primary could detect a whiff of camp Clinton angling for a Trump nomination, it didn't pass even idle speculation criteria. Yet, it was true. (Had the Podesta files been snatched and published in say November 2015, would there have been a Trump nomination?) Do you think that (as well as fixing the 2016 DP nomination) was new to team Clinton? They miscalculate a lot -- Gore was supposed to lose and Kerry wasn't supposed to get that close to winning and HRC lost to a black man named Barack Hussein Obama, in a fair election would likely have lost the 2016 nomination to an old Democratic Socialist, and with overwhelming MSM support and twice as many campaign dollars, she lost to Donald freaking Trump.

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@entrepreneur
"took a dive." Both very much wanted to be President. Neither was "in on it." Just as I don't think Biden was understood that he was not to enter the 2016 race if HRC did.

I can explain it and supply the facts but not briefly enough for a comment.

The apparent fact that you don't recall Gore's environmental and climate change record from before 2000 is a testament to the power of the MSM and the intra-party cabal that operated to defeat Gore as a POTUS contender.

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@Marie Gore's ability to put that issue well on the back-burner in 2000. Perhaps his advisors told him it just wan't sufficiently resonating with voters, so better to highlight more traditional issues. I recall Nader in 2000 making a big issue, and rightly so, of Gore's reluctance to run on global warming (were they using the term "climate change" back then? I don't think so).

As to prior involvement in that area, Gore was one of the first major elected pols to highlight the issue, back in the 1980s (when the term "greenhouse effect" was commonly heard). In the 1992 election, with Gore as Bill's VP, Poppy Bush tried to denigrate Gore with the term "Ozone Man".

As I recall, when Gore attended Harvard in the 1960s, a science class he took was given by one of the pioneer scientists in the global warming/greenhouse effect field, so years before the public heard about this, Gore was getting the word.

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and Kerry put up shockingly little resistance when they were cheated. And I don't believe it was because they expected that running for president was going to be easy and were suddenly disillusioned when they found out it was hard. For two guys who were selling themselves as world leaders they didn't stand up for themselves. And the similarities between the two events makes me believe that the underlying dynamics were the same.

@Marie

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snoopydawg's picture

@entrepreneur

Both Gore and Kerry folded in the face of overwhelming voter fraud especially Gore. All the members of the black caucus went to the microphone and talked about how blacks and other minorities were blocked from voting and other shenanigans and Gore just looked bored. I don't remember if he said anything or just sat there. And that Bush was going to call Gore but then got a phone call from his brother's friends in Florida and he held off. Then during Kerry's run there was so much evidence that the vote was rigged or outright stolen in Iowa and Kerry did nothing.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@entrepreneur
What in your fantasy could Gore possibly have done that he didn't do? He was broke, the DP wasn't interested in backing him up even for the steps that Gore took, the MSM was overwhelmingly against him, and his opposition knew what they had pulled in FL, had no shortage of money to hire the best talent, and had a packed Supreme Court as a last resort which they began making use of within a couple of days of the election.

Kerry was in a different position -- it was 48.7% to 50.1 in OH. (Gore lost OH by 3.5%) Too large a difference for a recount to reverse. Was there massive fraud in OH before the election? Most likely, but not as widespread and coordinated as there had been in FL 2000. The votes for Gore that hadn't been disappeared were still there in FL, but the same wasn't the case for Kerry in OH. I tend to doubt that Kerry actually received more votes than Bush in OH, but my conclusion is irrelevant because neither position can be verified.

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@Marie

tries, and that wasn't it, in either case. When Obama pushed for TPP, that's what it looks like when someone tries. When Obama made excuses for not even attempting to include a public option in the ACA, that's what it looks like when someone isn't trying.

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Lily O Lady's picture

@entrepreneur

the plug on the recount—illegally. Who was Gore supposed to appeal to—God?

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady been out there b/f Scotus stepped in to loudly call for the proper recount process to occur in FL w/o Scotus intervening.

There was just mostly silence from the Gore camp as I recall, even when they knew the Scotus card was being played by the Bush camp.

Again, my take is that this reticence to speak out was entirely in keeping with Gore's timid political instincts. Warren Christopher was put there to occasionally remind him not to upset the regular order of things by speaking out, even when the regular order was being egregiously upset by other areas of the establishment.

Btw, it's often interesting to get peoples' different takes on prior elections, and the back and forth could go on a long time. My bottom line view is Dems have nominated some rollover and take it weaklings in the recent past, and this has to change. There is hope for great improvement in this area with Bernie.

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WoodsDweller's picture

decided to talk to Carville for a reason. In the face of three consecutive losses, how to prop up Biden?
Biden's claim is that he's electable, so scare people into thinking Bernie isn't electable. "Who can we get to say forget the fact that Bernie is winning, say that he can't win?" "Oh, yeah, is Carville still alive?"
Then you have Matthews say "Boy, that Carville is really smart and knows his stuff." (because nobody is going to remember who he is). Then he says "How does Bernie feel about Castro?" (psst! Castro is still dead, Chris.) "Momentum? You know who else had momentum? HITLER! This is just like the Nazis rolling into Paris!"
They're doing what they're paid to do, prop up Biden in South Carolina by scaring the old folks.
After SC they'll kick Biden to the curb and prop up Bloomberg.

Who are you going to believe, MSNBC's experts who tell you that winning is a liability and that momentum is not to be trusted, or your lying eyes?

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

Shahryar's picture

that Liz Warren, who knows how to read polls, will swing back to Medicare for All, as if she never left it.

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@Shahryar
Her decision to run to be Joe Biden's VP looks like a bad bet and her numbers started to tank when she moved M4A out into some distant future.

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orlbucfan's picture

loudmouth, obnoxious GOPuke female Mary Matelin (sp)? Enough said. Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.