James Carville's "Last Stand"
--issues Dire Warning In Acosta Interview That Trump Might Be Planning To Cancel Midterm Elections--
According to this report in the "Daily Boulder," (also carried by multiple other major media) James Carville when asked in an interview with Jim Acosta if Trump would resort to cancelling the next election, he said emphatically yes, and that they are likely already making plans to insure that nothing interferes with his Congressional majorities, including the upcoming midterms.
James Carville has been on my shit list for quite a while, (though I still find him entertaining and interesting to watch) for more reasons than I care to revisit at the moment. But that doesn't mean I don't listen to him. He doesn't just speak for himself, he speaks for a faction, and publicly floats various trial balloons and political scenarios on behalf of his grouping in order to gauge the general response. Therefore Carville's public statements give me a kind of reading on what is being discussed behind closed doors, because of who he is and who else he talks to.
This warning by him is out of character. He has been a patient methodical “gamemaster” for most of his political career, and now he is breaking the glass and pulling the lever while screaming fire in a crowded building. He knows what will likely happen if Trump messes with the midterms in this context. We will be looking at social explosions which bring us to the point of civil war. Carville isn't predicting any of this, simply saying that it is a mistake to dismiss it as a "nuthingburger" because this is exactly how Trump thinks.
I'm not writing about this because I'm a "doomscroller." I see excellent progress building throughout our movement. However Carville himself has done almost nothing recently to contribute to that progress, because he has incredibly called upon Democrats to "roll over and play dead," meaning to just offer token resistance to Trump, to let him run amok, and then to capitalize on the destructive results in the next elections. Supposedly the GOP would “destroy itself” in the process of infighting and the Democrats would pick up the pieces in 2026. I find this to be worse than stupid, because he is highly intelligent and knows what he is saying.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-carville-says-the-democrats-should-play-dead-to-beat-trump/
For a numbers cruncher like Carville, the death toll piled up by Trump's policies are seen as "acceptable losses,” the reason he can rationalize his strategy of laying back and letting Trump govern. He is like the famous character played by Walter Matthau in the film "The Fortune Cookie" who was a caricature of your typical ambulance chasing accident lawyer, "Whiplash Willie." You have to watch the movie to fully get it. It was a comedy with Jack Lemmon, and is actually much funnier than Carville himself who is mostly just comical when he opens his mouth.
Now, he is being deadly serious. He is saying the quiet part out loud and for once being something other than a political fantasy game player telling people how to bet on election outcomes, or how Democrats can avoid "losing big" when they are resigned to not winning. Instead he is talking about the reality which most of us don't want to think about.
In my view someone "arranged" for Carville to interview with Acosta to put this warning out there. I can't say with any certainty or direct knowledge who it was, but I can say that based upon my experience and personal familiarity with him, Carville's fear is both real and reality-based, and so is that of the faction for which he is speaking.
I suggest folks pay attention to this, and don't let a few bad vibes about him personally lead you to dismiss this all as him being a “drama queen” who is going for news cycle “clicks, views, and likes.”
Also, the obvious thing for us to do in this light is to overhaul the Democratic Party leadership along with their outmoded political strategy and tactics, in order to meet the new challenges ahead of us. Make a list of everything we used to do to help win elections. And then shove that list through a shredder and toss it into a burn bag. You wouldn't install Windows 95 on a quantum computer, and we shouldn't be using a 30 year old political "OS" now. . In fact I would throw out everything associated with the year 1995, including Jim Carville's political advice back then to triangulate with the GOP, or to "play dead" against Trump today.
This time, "it's not the economy stupid, it's the Nazis."