Carville is an operator trying to save his own butt from the final collapse of New Deal liberalism he himself has engineered. I'm quite sure the DP will remain too stupid and dishonest to evict him. But he thoroughly deserves it, as his "anti-Washington" remark demonstrates.
Meanwhile, misanthropes notwithstanding, the obvious replacement is Robert Reich, who is eloquent and powerful at talking about a new liberal ethicalism. He would be taken seriously, and would actually be able to imagine making the needed shift. Carville will only give more of the same: He'll make "ethics" sound like John Kerry's "health care" policy, which was incoherent and dishonest at best.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Wojtek Sokolowski Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 9:54 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Carville picks up the "narrative" idea
Michael Dawson:
> This guy has got to go!
And replaced by whom? A populist dinosaur pipe dreaming of "moving the left?" Be real, wake up and smell the coffee. Carville was dead right even though this was not his original idea. Democrats failed because they did not provide an emotionally compelling narrative for the TV-brainwashed moronic masses to compel them to go out and pull the level for their man. The Repugs did and won. It is that simple.
As HL Mencken aptly observed, most people cannot comprehend political ideas, they do not know hat is good or bad for them - and there are good structural reasons for that, which I mentioned elsewhere on this list. Their political behavior is guided mainly by emotional appeals and fear.
Politicians know that and use it to their advantage. They are like used car dealers: selling you a suspicious product of unknown quality i.e. operating under the condition of information asymmetry. This causes apprehension in the buyers. Dealers know that and do their best to dispel that apprehension by creating the illusion of familiarity - by being folksy, pretending to be the buyer's friend, and channeling the buyer's fears on the boogey men of other dealers. Everyone knows that, everyone hates them for that, yet most folks fall for their tricks.
Welcome to Bush America. "Da people" just fell for the oldest used car dealer trick on the books and ended up buying that old oil-leaking jalopy with a faulty head gasket from the Bush/Cheney shop. And it happened mainly because the guy who was selling them a slightly used BMW appeared too snotty and did not tell them the bullshit they wanted to hear. It is only logical that the BWW dealer must come with a more polished sales pitch if they want to be back in business.
Wojtek
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