Jonathan Alter blasts Carville for his negativity about the Dem convention.

[madfloridian]

I am not always fond of Alter, but this time I agree with him. I have not yet gotten over the attempted coup on Dean by Carville right after the 2006 election.

We were feeling elated, and he took the wind out of our sails.

From Newsweek blog:

Carville only slightly more popular than McCain

Carville has been all over CNN and ABC News trashing the Democrats for lacking a message and not choosing Hillary Clinton as VP. Even Terry McAuliffe--once the most impassioned of Cinton backers, but now a force for party unity--told me he thought Carville was out of line.

Carville said on TV that he was "neither impressed nor pleased" with the first night of the convention because it lacked a theme beyond the Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama speeches, adding that Obama's "got to show some respect and graciousness toward the Clintons. " As for her supporters? "I don't know if they're going to get behind the ticket."

No one should expect Carville to be an Obama cheerleader. That wouldn't be good TV anyway. But Carville was totally misreading the mood of the convention, as the overwhelmingly pro-Obama roll call showed. And the question is why.

Then the blogger mentions a possible reason....Carville's wife Mary Matalin and her publication of an attack book on Obama.

The Obama campaign is already furious at Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, for editing and pushing "The Obama Nation," Jerome Corsi's bestselling hatchet job. (Matalin has her own conservative publishing imprint.) Obama supporters don't want to be quoted on the subject, but they believe that Carville and Matalin are looking at the demise of their long-running, lucrative road show if Obama wins. In effect, this takes their strange cross-party act to a new level--one that is angering a lot of convention-goers. It's one thing for Mary to work for President George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney; it's another for his wife to participate in the Swift-Boating of the Democratic nominee (Corsi co-wrote the book, "Unfit for Command," that sunk John Kerry with a fusilade of falsehoods in 2004).

I've always liked James, but the contradictions of his life have finally caught up with him.

The name of her publishing company is Threshold, thus the play on words.


LOW THRESHOLD Mary Matalin and husband James Carville (Photo: Getty Images

Mary Matalin's publishing company, doing Corsi's book, also Karl Rove's memoirs

Once upon a time—only a decade or two ago—big time New York publishers like Simon & Schuster actually cared whether or not the nonfiction books they published contained real facts.

No more. That period ended when these publishers were absorbed by great conglomerates like CBS. Now the only thing anyone really cares about is how much money a book can make.

The latest and most dramatic evidence of this mind-set is Obama Nation, the new book by Jerome R. Corsi, just published by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster headed by Republican hatchet-woman Mary Matalin. Corsi is the proven fraud previously most famous as the co-author of Unfit for Command, the book that libeled John Kerry so successfully four years ago.

I don't watch cable TV news that often anymore. But from what I see here James Carville speaks out powerfully just enough to keep people on his side.

But for his wife to be publishing a hit piece on Obama....he must have some feelings about that.

[w13rd0]

1. Carville...

...heard someone say that politics was a contact sport, and so he decided to ride the vile beast.

Fuck him. I hope no Democrat ever listens to him, or that shitbag Lieberman, ever again.

[Raine]

2. Caville's PUMA sneakers the first night

of the convention told EXACTLY where he stood and he wasn't even subtle about it. x(

[BeyondGeography]

3. He glumly said Obama "closed the sale" with his speech last Thursday

on CNN a couple of nights ago. His "enthusiasm level" was pretty telling.