Speaking of James Carville, here he is quoted at The Hill:
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville went off on the current state of the party on Tuesday, asking why Tom Perez “is still the chair” of the Democratic National Committee.
“We gotta decide what we want to be,” the “Ragin’ Cajun” said on “The Beat” with Ari Melber on MSNBC. “Do we want to be an ideological cult, or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct — to be a majority party?”
In another part of the interview, Carville said Democrats need to “wake up” while avoiding being seen as the equivalent of the United Kingdom’s Labor Party, which has suffered a string of crushing losses recently.
“This party needs to wake up and make sure that we talk about things that are relevant to people,” Carville implored. “We don’t need to become the British Labor Party. That’s a bad thing. It’s not going well over there.”
“We’re, like, talking about people voting from jail cells,” Carville said at another point. “And not having a border.”
Maybe his instincts are all wrong. Maybe all that’s necessary for the a Democratic candidate, any Democratic candidate to prevail in November is Trump-hatred.
As I said in an earlier post, feel lucky, punk?
They hate Trump but can they unify?
If Bernie gets the nomination, will there be a third party?
If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, will there be a third party?
I don’t think that Sanders supporters want a third party. I think they want the Democratic Party to become the Sanders party.
Grey: IMO if Bernie gets the nomination he’ll get no support from the DNC or the money people who will concentrate on down ticket races so they can keep throwing impeachment charges at Trump, hopefully one of them succeeding, and work towards regaining control of the party by 2022 or 2024. If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination the AOC wing goes nuts and sits out or votes for Trump (to some extent) and afterwards goes scorched earth on the DNC. Either way I see a colossal defeat for the Democratic Presidential ticket in 2020, the antics and incompetents are scaring too many voters away. If AOC runs in 2024, it’s a rinse and repeat.
Dave: Agree with your comment. But as Carville says, is that a winning combo nationally? They may be sure, but I really doubt it. In which case they will go completely off the deep end because the righteous and pure never lose elections, they just have them stolen from them, witness the 2016 primaries and today’s Iowa caucuses.
Reminds me on why hedge fund managers tend to take an undue amount of risk when investing. If the risky investments work out, the manager shares in the gains. The risky investments lose, it is not the manager who loses his shirt.
If you are going to make a prediction about an election as an unknown, how would you quickly build a brand like Nate Silver, Sean Trende, etc, etc.
Additionally, you’ve got to consider the academic environment. Either the Democratic candidate will win in November or the Republican one will. You’ve got a 50-50 chance of being correct. If you predict a Republican sweep, you will get exactly zero credit from your peers if you’re right and if you’re wrong you’re a dunce. If you predict a Democratic sweep, and the Democrat wins, you’re a prophet. If you’re wrong, you’re wrong. If it’s a weaker Democratic victory, your calibration was off. Game theory says predict a Democratic sweep.
Maybe, but for Sanders, there is no next time.
“Game theory says predict a Democratic sweep.”
Only if you believe what you are selling. Remember that part of Silver’s cred is that he was the Dem pollster who came closest to predicting a Trump win. He gave him a 29% chance while the Trump campaign’s own internal polling had it at 30%.
“Our final forecast, issued early Tuesday evening, had Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.1 By comparison, other models tracked by The New York Times put Trump’s odds at: 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent and less than 1 percent. And betting markets put Trump’s chances at just 18 percent at midnight on Tuesday, when Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, cast its votes.”
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/
Steve
The thing about wholly depending on “Trump Hatred,†and nothing else, to pull a candidate over the winning line, is that there might not be enough of that to do the trick. Just today I’ve had conversations with some of my CA Trump-hating friends who surprisingly were positively impressed by Trump’s SOTU speech. I’ve Also heard some c-span phone calls released, that were less than flattering towards Pelosi’s and the Dems conduct during that speech. Hate, IMO, only goes so far until the law of diminishing returns kicks in.
Political fatigue will set in as well, I think Bloomberg will help us find out the limits of negative publicity. His stated goal is to motivate voters to turn out. Out of animus towards Trump. I feel propaganda when I see it, like to think others do too.
Actually, Nate Silver’s rep came from predicting precisely Obama’s winning margin in 2008, and 2012. Remember, fivethrityeight.com preexisted Trump.
By the way, I’m not sure why there is thrashing over Sanders and make unfavorable analogies to Jeremy Corbyn and the British Labour party.
Jeremy Corbyn and the British Labour party kept the Conservatives to a weak minority government in 2017. This was against expectations that Corbyn would get thrashed for being too radical. Theresa May resigned as PM before he did.
Things didn’t work so well in 2019, but to claim being “radical” is a guarantee of electoral disaster is incorrect.
“Actually, Nate Silver’s rep came from predicting precisely Obama’s winning margin”
Yup, that is why I said “part”. If memory serves he also pretty accurately predicted the popular vote margin for the Trump election.
Steve
Steve
“If the risky investments work out, the manager shares in the gains. The risky investments lose, it is not the manager who loses his shirt.â€
That’s not actually how it works. But it’s not germane to the discussion.
This has nothing to do with James Carville, but is a regular topic here: asset price inflation and Fed policy. I recommend it to interested readers. I have always pointed out that by destroying the term structure of interest rates the, as academics would put it, risk premia for risky assets has been altered: yield chase.
This article takes that further to discuss how interest rates and funding mechanisms, naturally more amplified in a leveraged setting, direct the process, and how they in turn create vulnerabilities. It’s wonkish and hard to follow if you aren’t in the bowels of some of these instruments operations. But it appears logical.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/here-it-one-bank-finally-explains-how-feds-balance-sheet-expansion-pushes-stocks-higher
Bet a guy could make a good living translating articles like that into English.
Grey
Oh, its in English, but it requires at least some grounding in concepts that most don’t have, and too few give a damn.
I didn’t really follow the funding argument other than to see that without Fed liquidity, long term fixed income assets could be fire saled to raise cash = More serious market disruption. (You’d really have to be in the guts of these markets to fully understand.)
The Fed needs to move towards market rates. As with all effups, its going to need to be slowly, not abruptly. The cure could kill the patient. Trump has political motives for keeping the stock market high. But then again, Obama did as well, not that it will get reported that way by partisans. As for the Fed, a pox on them. Savers screwed, risky asset buyers helped.
I don’t really buy it, but let’s just stipulate that hard core capital investment is depressed in favor of financial assets. Well, look at the Fed. I know businessmen, especially large corporate types are easy targets, but they would just be responding to a Fed generated environment.
Difficulties facing the DNC This is from AOC:
“Our objective is to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous communities, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.”
Big load.