Am I alone in thinking that this editorial

[paulk]

is a big, steaming pile of crap?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=296x6089

Are the rank and file really to the left of Kerry?

And is there going to be a civil war in the Democratic Party?

Is this just more of the "throw enough shit around and it's bound to stick to somebody" school of punditry?

Should I really defend James Carville, who I mostly can't stand?

[jenndar]

1. Well...

1. No.

2. Hardly.

3. Not if we're smart.

4. Is there another school of punditry?

5. Oh, hell no!

The book being a pile of crap and the review of it being a pile of crap are hardly mutually exclusive.

[ProSense]

2. No!

And ditto what Jendar says!

[sandnsea]

3. Not now dear

I have a headache.

Did anybody just see Harold Ford on Hardball... talking about energy policy and NOT mentioning wind or solar. :banghead:

See, I told you, I really do have a headache. :)

[Dr Ron]

4. Not really left versus right

This is an oversimplification, but Carville is more of a leftist/populist on economic issues and conservative on social issues, while Kerry is more liberal on social issues (even if not far left, leading to some disagreements with the netroots) and fiscally conservative. (I mean conseravative in a good sense here, distinct from the type of conservativism/extrmism seen in the GOP).

Therefore questions of whether others are to the left or right of Kerry among Democrats gets confusing. It depends upon which issues.

[karynnj]

5. My answers

1) I very much doubt that the rank and file is to the left of Kerry. I live in NJ. I heard no one say Kerry was too conservative. Look at the 2004 primaries. How many votes did Kuchinich and Sharpton get? Even if you throw in Dean saying his voters were to the left - you come nowhere near half.

I also think they are mistaking anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-polite behavior and extreme libertarian people (such as on DU) as the "left". I think the results of 2004 showed that this group was smaller than anticipated. My conjecture on why is that people like me (and likely others here) either went to anti-war rallies or signed moveon.org petitions, but looked at horror at the excesses of ANSWER. They are the noisiest on the web, so they are exaggerated.

2)Will there be a civil war in the Democratic party? I am of mixed opinions on this.

Yes: The reason for "yes" is that I think that the neo-con ideas developed among both Democrats and Republicans. Those ideas radically determine what foreign policy should be. If these ideas aren't completely rejected by 2007 or 2008, many people may want their vote determined by their view on this. The problem is that this split is not on Democrat/Republican lines.

The parties have never been homogeneous - there are only 2 major parties and if you took 2 (extreme) positions for foreign policy, economic policy and social policy - you would have 8 groups. In most of my life time, people didn't vote on foreign policy (except in the VN days). Democrats had liberal economic and liberal social issues; Republicans small government, conservative values. If you were lucky, you were aligned the same way for both social and economic values - If not you had to choose or remain independent picking candidates as they matched you on the most important issues. I think at this point people define themselves based on this mapping.

The problem now is that the foreign policy component can't be ignored. The problem is that both factions within each party will want to dominate. (This is further cloudy be not knowing the definitive values of many people.) In the Democratic party, this will pit "continue the war"(Hillary, Biden, Bayh, Warner) against "end the war"(Kerry, Feingold, Edwards) with Clark to hard to figure out. If this is real and the primaries force the issue and candidates need to stay where they stand, there could be a schism and the same thing could occur on the Republican side.

If both parties nominated continue the war candidates, the Democratic party could split. In 2004, Kerry as a tough dove wasn't the favorite of each extreme but he was acceptable.

3) I thought the most interesting thing was that I found Carville (and Begala to a lesser degree to be sleazier than I had thought. I also think that they overemphasize the problem of Kerry listening to consultants. He was smart enough not to listen to Clinton twice -when told to speak mostly on the economy and on the gay amendments. I think he was right both times. I think the consultants and Kerry were incredible in the primaries. The problem could be the mix of Kerry/Kennedy people and the Clinton people in the general election. I think they fought and that was likely not good. I also suspect that the Clinton people thought they were smarter than both Kerry and his people. This may have led to some of the bad decisions.

On The SBVT, I think a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking happened. The media response was unprecedented. The Clinton war room idea was to get an answer or response out within the news cycle. With the SBVT, Kerry's people did get out some debunking very quickly in the spring. They responded immediately the same way, but the media simply went from charge to charge - trying to find one that couldn't be dispelled and they gave a hugh amount of credibility to them even as the number of debunked charges went up. Remember the vaunted Clinton people had Clinton just saying that jennifer Flowers (for example) was lying - it was his credibility against hers, he won.

4) Defending Carville - from what was here I hope no Democrat I admire gets within 10 feet of him. could he become a Republican, PLEASE.

[Moderator]

6. Locking

Please don't "rally the troops" from the groups to the other forums.