Oh hell yeah. Hilary Clinton was on Walmart's board of directors. Frontline did an entire 7-up style longitudinal series on the economic impacts of NAFTA. But James is absolutely mad about pronouns. he is saying. in as many words. That the horse-paste big-lie migrant-caravan hoi polloi would vote Democrat if only they could keep watching the Washington Redskins and it's fucking BULLSHIT. That, right there, is James Carville saying "if we keep talking the way old people talk, young people will fall in line" and he's saying that in this environment: So yeah. You're going to get crucified because both you, and James Carville, are very, very wrong.I'm saying that since Clinton, until Biden's actual progressive economics, Dem and GOP presidents have been worried more about banks than people.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you’re talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it’s not.
I always tell people that we’ve got to stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Yiddish. We have to speak the way regular people speak, the way voters speak. It ain’t complicated. That’s how you connect and persuade. And we have to stop allowing ourselves to be defined from the outside.
Carville is talking political strategy, and it's a mistake to think this is a simply young/old thing or to equate it with appeasing racists. You can make an argument that it is, and it probably rings true in a perma-blue state. But that argument makes people tilt their head in confusion in the Midwest.
Yeah - his political strategy is "appease old people." Meanwhile, the argument "my neighbors are real people and yours aren't" is beneath you. 36% of Washingtonians identify as Democrats. That, of course, beats the tar out of the 18% who identify as Republicans but that is due in no small part to the fact that the Republicans ran a speedbump from nowheresville whose principle qualification was refusing to enforce a gun ban so why the fuck would you bother. Carville is stuck in this red v blue checkers game that he won in 1992 by going Republican Lite when the real question is "can you make people under 30 hold their noses long enough to vote for someone James Carville thinks will win." I don't have many conversations about who to vote for. My conversations? Across the board? Are "should I vote at all."
California was reliably Republican until they decided to profile brown people. Arizona was reliably Democratic until Barry Goldwater encouraged military families to move in. Eventually it, too, became too racist to persist. you know what a "swing state" is? It's an ephemeral political abstraction weaponized to disenfranchise the coasts. Swing state Michigan: "Deep red" Texas:
