James Carville: why we lost

[struggle4progress]

James Carville focuses on the challenges faced by the Democratic Party, the importance of winning elections, and the need for a strategic reassessment of their approach. He reflects on identity politics, missed opportunities in recent elections, and emphasizes the necessity of a strong campaign infrastructure. Carville calls for unity and action among Democrats to effectively address the current political landscape and regain power.

[SoCalDavidS]

1. Go Away!!

It is fucking pathetic how all these people who told us 5 days ago that Kamala was certain to win, now have to keep their Bullshit going, to support themselves.

I'm done believing or even listening to their Bullshit, and I'm not going to click on a single one of these, so they can get clicks.

[Babajida]

4. 100%

[Fish700]

62. That was mostly here.

All the MSM reported it was going to be a very close run race. The certain to win folks were mostly a segment of posters here and on Reddit. It got my hopes up two after first being very doubtful after Joe dropped out.

[Elessar Zappa]

2. Didn't watch the video but

what’s clear to me is that we need a left wing media ecosystem like the right has built up over the decades. Many Americans live in an alternate reality. We need a way to break through.

[flamingdem]

10. What do you disagree with?

I find myself agreeing with most of what he says.

Maybe I'm an old crank too!

[ForgedCrank]

21. He has

a lot of solid points, if you can ignore the drool running down his chin.
He knows the fundamentals of politics well (yea, an understatement). I've never been a big fan of how vulgar he can be, but he knows what he's talking about.
I think each of us builds a view of what the world should look like in our own ideal conditions, and we are always trying to apply it to other people. And those other people are doing the same thing. We forget about that all to easily and expect complete unity on everything, and when we encounter someone who isn't in step, we reject them outright. That isn't a good strategy at all. In the end, you don't get half of what you want through compromise, you get absolutely nothing. I think that is the premise of what he is saying.
Of course campaigning is a different animal and in his eyes, it's a cut-throat process where you say or do anything necessary to secure a win. while that may be somewhat true, it's a hard one for me to swallow.

[misanthrope]

46. Your second to last sentence

Is something he learned long ago in the South where politics has always been a "contact sport." It is also part of the reason Southerners can make particularly adept politicians, because they grow up in a place where labyrinthine social custom and superficial cordialities have an exalted role, but those same people can just as easily stab you in back while smiling about it.

It is also the edge Republicans have shown in electoral politics over the last 40 years. They can't govern for shit but when it comes to running for office or maneuvering for position, they are ruthless.

[flamingdem]

50. That's fascinating

As a northerner now living part time in the south that helps me get this culture better. I really have to wonder how they pull it off.

For this reason Carville still has something to offer..

[flamingdem]

49. Well said

Thanks for the points. You got to the heart of the matter. I think politics is pretty transactional and idealism cannot get in the way of necessary and smart compromises.

We'll be called hypocritical regardless..

[BannonsLiver]

69. Yeah I wonder if he has Bell's palsy

I had to turn it off it got so gross.

[ForgedCrank]

71. I've seen

it before, possibly a mild stroke at some point in the past, he didn't even realize it. I don't know his medical history, but that was my first guess.

[ThePartyThatListens]

40. Did he mention "woke" as a problem?

If so, what does "woke" mean?

[Tadpole Raisin]

5. Do ANY of the experts who are telling us what the Harris Team did wrong start

the discussion by admitting that THEY were wrong and spend even a few minutes (seconds?) explaining why they thought she would blow the election out of the water.

We lost, ok I know we have to look at all the factors but I don’t want to listen to anyone who isn’t willing to spend at least 50% of the time telling us why THEY were wrong.

If you want to be brutally honest start with yourself!!

[JI7]

12. People thought she would win because she kept proving herself as decent and competent

And Trump was a fucked up mess.

[Polybius]

6. I'm more interesting in hearing from Michael Moore

Is he in hiding from his prediction?

[flamingdem]

13. This is from before the election and no longer

has relevance. Maybe there's something new from him after Kamala lost.

[Polybius]

44. No, he's hiding

His ego won't let him admit how wrong his worthless prediction was. Maybe next week.

[GoreWon2000]

23. Moore supported Nader in 2000

and helped make the current nightmare possible.

[CoopersDad]

7. Professional yakker wins either way, more to yak about.

I dismissed him back when he took our party from responsible stewardship to "it's the economy stupid".

I'm a Jimmy Carter Democrat. We have not been doing what we need to do, which is to lean all the way in and challenge income disparity and tax wealth and massive incomes back into submission.

As it is, we might have to wait for an extinction-level event to get things right.

[karynnj]

28. The first president in decades to slightly lower income inequality is Biden

He might have been more like Carter on that issue.

[marble falls]

57. More accurately, Bill Clinton.

[Hotler]

8. None of them ever addressed the deep down seething hate for Dem & LIbs that gnaws at them 24/7.

Sure they dislike the brown skin people but they really, really hate us, why I do not know, maybe it's the 8-hour work day????

[Kali999]

53. hmmm

Forty years of propaganda. Why they hate us. Limbauh O Rielly Tucker pucker Joe Rogan Alex Jones Glenn Beck. O Rielly got a abortion doctor killed. Kock and billionaires play the long game. demonization

[Hotler]

60. I'm refering to specific policies inacted by Dems & Libs that actully harm the repugs quality of life.

I know who told them to hate. I was try to narrow the reason down.

[Kid Berwyn]

55. What Rush Limbaugh did until the day he died.

Now Putin and his puppets spread the hate via social, TV and everything else that can lie 24/7/366.

[fmdaddio]

9. Agreed

However we do need to find a way to build a media infrastructure that will attract more people. MSNBC is not it. So many people I know spend their time on social media. We need better and entertaining but smarter version of a Joe Rogan for example. The man has a brain the size of a pea, but is wildly popular.

[SoFlaBro]

38. Joe Rogan is a stupid motherfucker. He bent the goddamn knee when Orange Bastard smacked the shit outta him for RFK endo

[Klarkashton]

34. There was a guy named Howard Stern at one time.

That was like that.

[Freddie]

11. She is a woman. That is all

[flamingdem]

14. That's obviously not all

Hillary won in effect and won the popular vote.

Obama won twice.

There's more to it.

[LisaL]

17. Obama was never a woman.

And Hillary lost. There was no president Hillary.

[GoreWon2000]

24. Women are always at the bottom

Both Hilary and V.P. Harris have proved that. A black man is less objectionable than any woman in the wealthy, white, anglo male hierarchy.

[kelly1mm]

41. I am not buying it. Women Senate candidates in NV, MN, WI, and MI outperformed VP Harris. Why? nt

[GoreWon2000]

42. They weren't running for the top job

I have 24 years of experience working on dem election campaigns. I know all too well the bias that women have to deal with and the much harder time they have raising money. Have you not heard of the good old boys network?

[kelly1mm]

48. If the 'good old boys network' is limited to just the Presidency of the United States then thats

some real progress, no?

My take is it is more of the albatross of the cumulative inflation that occurred during the Biden/Harris administration around her neck, her inability to separate herself from President Biden (the now famous 'The View' clip) and the trans issues that were effectively used as a weapon against her - particularly the inmates and the she's for they/them, he's for you ad.

[GoreWon2000]

67. Disappointing you don't understand the hardships

that women continue to face in running for office. This is why Emily's list was started in an effort to try to help bridge the campaign funding gap for women. There are too many people who won't vote for a woman for President. That was true in 2016 and now in 2024. It's only been since the early 1990s that women have slowly begun to show up in greater numbers in the Senate. It's been a long tough battle to break through the good old boys network. Women don't get anything close to what the good old boys get in campaign funding. This is also true in business. White men are the preferred group for donating business start up money. Have you ever worked on any women's campaigns? I have and having enough campaign money was always an issue.
The 2024 election was not about the economy as the pro repug media is trying to fool us with. The 2024 election was about maintaining the wealthy white, anglo, christian male patriarchy that has controlled our country since the beginning.

[kelly1mm]

70. If your following statement is true then how do you explain MN, WI,MI women Senators all

way outpacing VP Harris?

You wrote:

"The 2024 election was not about the economy as the pro repug media is trying to fool us with. The 2024 election was about maintaining the wealthy white, anglo, christian male patriarchy that has controlled our country since the beginning."

How were voters not voting for VP Harris and voting for women Senate candidates on the same ballots reflective of that statement.

Lets even assume for arguments sake that misogyny had a (significant?) effect. Why again was VP Harris and not the others particularly effected?

I posit that all of them were effected by misogyny similarly but VP Harris had other problems that did not effect the others which I detailed before.

[GoreWon2000]

75. You just don't get it

You don't understand what a big difference running for President is from running for Senate. You clearly don't understand that too many people don't view women as being leaders. You clearly don't understand that women candidates have a much harder time raising campaign money. You also don't seem to be aware of the significant funding disparity between the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. You don't understand that women earn 83 cents for every dollar men earn because they are perceived as being less valuable. I suggest that you join a women's rights group and work on some campaign's of women running for office to see the disparities women face first hand. I've done exactly that so that's how I know.

[Abolishinist]

43. Forget it, Jake. This is DUtown.

?q=w_2000,c_fill/f_webp

[angrychair]

45. Hillary won the popular vote

And once all the votes are counted Harris will when the popular vote as well (71 million and counting). The majority of Americans wanted both of them. TSF will be the first candidate in history to lose the popular vote three times in a row.

[Bettie]

29. She's a Black woman

racism + misogyny

[OhioBack2Blue]

31. And there 2024 code words...

Cheap eggs and gas

[Wavelight]

16. Not that simple IMO

It's probably one of the factors, but it's down on the list.

The postmortem on this will take a while but put me in the camp of disinformation/misinformation. The right-wing media machine is unparalleled—Fox News, X/Twitter, Newsmax and then all of the streamers. I heard online that the top 10 in “traffic” for streamers who express a political affiliation were all on the right. These are impossible hurdles for lower information voters to overcome.

[SoFlaBro]

39. So at some point either we have to find a way for women to win or fucking not run women. I fucking like option A.

[TheDemsshouldhireme]

15. Maybe go back to Howard Deans 50 state strategy

I work for an organization in south central PA covering 10 counties. I bet there is only one or two of those counties that has a democratic office. The votes in just these 10 counties wiped out the gains in Allegheny County(Pittsburgh). As Obama said you have to lose those counties by smaller margins, where Hillary did much worse than Obama and Harris did worse than Biden. We have to start having a presence and talking to people in rural counties. If not, enjoy losing them by 70-30 plus and being in the minority where your only power is the filibuster. In 2008 we had a county office, no more.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

18. We lost because the administration had a 40% approval rating and 70% of Americans thought we were on the wrong track.

[flamingdem]

19. Yes, hard to make it work

with those numbers.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. Random thoughts

Kamala ran the best campaign she could facing strong headwinds. She had the wind at her face, not at her back. I'm lucky. The high prices didn't really bother me but I can see them bothering the less fortunate. Still I could see the price of food rising and some times by a lot. I always buy the generic alternative except when it comes to pop. I shouldn't really be drinking pop anyway. Every incumbent party has lost the their bid for reelection when the president had low approval ratings. Stevenson lost, Humphrey lost, Carter lost, Bush Pere lost, and John McCain lost. Trump's awfulness makes the pain worse. Racism exists. Misogyny exists. Paternalism exists but what ultimately sunk us was Biden's low approval rating, undeserved in my opinion but my opinion isn't dispositive and so many Americans thinking we're on the wrong track.

[Xolodno]

37. Exactly.

When you are using your credit card to buy necessary groceries, its not going to turn out well. Add to the fact there were polls that put Harris in the negative and everyone here pissed on them. Maybe some should have listened before we believed our own bullshit? I'll say it again, some probably didn't bother to vote or lodged a protest vote. And again, it doesn't make sense, but people don't make rational decisions when emotional.

[flamingdem]

63. We need better internal polling

at a minimum.

I'd like to know more about why people didn't vote.

The right wing media exhausted them?

[displacedvermoter]

76. What part of that 70 percent were people who

thought the country IS "on the wrong track" because one of our two major parties is composed of crazy people, and the voters seem happy with that.

And the media never, ever, frames this particularly stupid stat in that context. And people on DU or in the media who want to bash our party never do either.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

81. There is definitely some truth to that.

A lot of people are unhappy with Trump hovering over our politics. That being said Biden's approval ratings are less ambiguous.

[displacedvermoter]

82. Again, if 75 or 80 percent of the Republicans you

ask about Biden's performance all tell you it sucks, as they are duty bound to say so, and only a quarter of the Dems you ask say the same thing, the numbers are skewed even before independent voters are factored in.

But it doesn't matter, his poor approval ratings were baked in and rehashed during the weekly trips to the diners of Kentucky and Indiana made by the media. It was part of the narrative. Hi

[Self Esteem]

20. Has James Carville done anything post-1992?

[GoreWon2000]

25. Carville disenfranchising 14 million dem primary voters isn't a good look

He just needs to go away.

[yourout]

26. He needs to be put out to pasture.

He doesn't need to go away mad.
He just needs to go away.

[OAITW r.2.0]

27. We didn't lose....the Country lost.

[Lovie777]

30. Please don't let him on sky. ...

Social.

[lees1975]

33. We lost because Americans have been fed Trump propaganda by the news media 24-7 for the whole four years since he lost.

We have no free press any more, and few qualified journalists who are articulate enough, and can think critically enough to report fairly.

We lost because we did not get out in front of the issues of inflation and the price increases that came with it, and we did not have the ability to do any real mass saturation of media to counter the flagrant lies of Trump.

[Paladin]

35. Fuck you, Carville. (nt)

[Yavin4]

36. Identity politics? White people haven't voted for a Democrat in 50 years

[misanthrope]

47. So not long after Nixon

adopted the Southern Strategy.

[yardwork]

59. Exactly. Talk about identity politics!

[yardwork]

51. White people...

As a white person, I continue to be appalled.

[flamingdem]

52. We should have known this

It was folly to think white women would change their party vote because of the abortion issue.

[yardwork]

54. I don't think it was folly on our part.

Hoping that people will be reasonable is not folly, especially when so many people worked so hard to inform voters.

[flamingdem]

56. Then why didn't the convincing work?

I think abortion was low on the list compared to the economy and immigration.

The it can't happen to me thing. Repubs don't have much room for empathy in their brains.
Studies have been done..

[yardwork]

58. It didn't work because Trump voters were misinformed. or selfish or irrational.

Who knows all the reasons people chose to vote for Trump. All I know is that it's not because we had bad candidates or bad messaging.

People are using sports metaphors to say that "the losing team" needs to figure out what they did wrong. That approach works well when you're playing a game on a level playing field, with rules both teams follow that are enforced by objective referees, where all the spectators see what's happening on the field. Nothing could be further from this past election. Throw that metaphor away. It's not relevant to this election.

Part of the road to fascism is discouraging the rational people so that we lose confidence and question ourselves. Don't fall into that.

Those of us who voted for Kamala Harris and enthusiastically supported her ticket did not engage in folly. We engaged in rational, thoughtful optimism. Good for us!

[flamingdem]

61. Yes but if we look only at the abortion issue

there could be some conclusions there about what people will and will not vote for - and how the messaging has been interrupted by right wing media.

IMO, we have to learn from this and make changes to the messaging and focus.

Also, we were pretty convinced that she would win. Somehow we need better predictive tools.

[yardwork]

65. I hope the DNC can do that.

Tbh, I'm not sure what more can be done. I'm out of ideas for now.

[mercuryblues]

68. The abortion issue

trump has said many different things.

He took responsibility for appointing the judges then struck down RvW.

He said that his plan was to leave it up to the sates, and he disagreed with how far some states are going, but it is up to them to decide.

He wants some sort of punishment for women who seek abortion.

Wants a national abortion ban.

republicans choose to hear, that the states can decide the issue and if a woman wants an abortion, she can get one.

States are trying to pass travel bans for women the suspect are pregnant. They are also trying to get medical records of women who seek medical care out of state.

Then they are freaking shocked when they have a pregnancy crisis and can't get an abortion to save their life.

Democrats have tried to tell them women would die because of these laws, and they will not give a shit until it happens to them.
They can justify it happening to other women, because they weren't pure enough to carry a child. God's will and all.

Republicans are all the same, they can give a shit about anything unless it happens to them. That is what trump counts on. Men will never die because of a bad pregnancy.

[Renew Deal]

64. Looks like southern Democrats have done the best.

Does Bashear qualify?

[oasis]

66. Listening to Carville is like panning for gold,

more misses than hits, but a few nuggets now and then.

[4th gen blue]

72. Carvel needs to go away

He rode in on Clinton's powerful coattails and always took too much credit.

[townie]

73. Carville always has the answers after the fact

[republianmushroom]

74. WHY !

16M non-voters, 12M-D, 4M-R. 11% of the vote. No one mentions this.
3/4 Democrats,
1/4 Republican,
..hmm, how does that happen? Do I hear De-registration fraud.

I keep seeing reports of single digit percentages making the difference. Worthless!

They successfully deleted our win.
To de-registration,
Add WSJ-FOX, WP, X, ... giving credibility to bothsiderism.
Add social media recurring memes' every few minutes versus one of our on one visits ONE time in many many months.
Add laser guided social media hitting a ripe susceptible target over and over again.
Add compelling lies from think tanks.

It doesn't have to be our message that fails.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219704186

[Initech]

77. Why we lost: social media

Seriously, Trump was every other post 24 hours a day since January. Never heard one fucking peep about Kamala or Biden. Not one.

Saved you a watch.

[Hotler]

78. And this ......

54% of Americans are literate to just below a sixth grade level.
51% of those voting chose fascist dictatorship over democracy.

[Ndp5]

79. Jon Stewart answered this critique

Ok, I don’t have time to listen to the entire play-by-play of which op-eds Carville wrote when and who said mean things about him in response.

I will say that Carville seems a lot more engaged and knowledgeable about the gross paleo-macho social circles that Trump inhabits — because they mirror the gross social circles that Bill Clinton inhabits — than he is on the fate of the broader country. Also, who cares how old Kimberly Whatshername is? By the looks of things, gravity has been at least as unkind to Carville and Clinton as it has been to her.

I don’t agree with everything Jon Stewart has said about this election and find it unconscionable that he’s laughing about the result when he has a young daughter who has to come of age in Trump’s America. But Monday night, he gave a good answer to some of what Carville said. Which basically, as far as I can tell, boils down to the old Clinton team standby: steal the Republicans’ playbook.

Also, whatever you think of the handoff from Biden to Harris, there’s just no way Democrats could have given the nomination to a white candidate over her or a male candidate over her and not lost a lot of minority and female voters. And besides, there was no time, thanks to Biden.

[underpants]

80. 👀

Watching later