Carville Forgets: It's the Internet, Stupid

I have to hand it to James Carville. At least he had the courage to admit in his new article for the Financial Times – Democrats need to learn the blame game – that he was the author of 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation , a book that came out last March. Looking at it ten short months later, Carville’s tome was as ill-timed as NYTBR editor Sam Tanenhaus’ The Death of Conservatism.

Oh, well, quickie political books are a tad treacherous. [Note to self: Think more long term.]

Of course, that’s about the only sensible thing Carville does in his article, which he wrote on vacation in the Seychelles during the Massachusetts election, but seems as if it’s coming from Alpha Centauri – meaning that his thesis is wildly out of date, as if beamed in from space light years ago. It’s an argument for Blaming Bush, of all things, something that even Barack Obama has begun to avoid, after months of trying, because it’s so obviously and completely self-destructive.

Why? It’s too easy to know the truth now. When someone like Carville (or his opponent) bloviates on a cable network you can check what he was saying instantly on the Internet. Two minutes on Google would tell you there’s plenty of blame for the economic meltdown for Republicans and Democrats (hello, Fannie and Freddie!), something Carville wants to pin entirely on Bush, which is utter, brain dead partisan nonsense. We all know that and to say otherwise is insulting and – sorry, James – real boring. That dog won’t hunt anymore.

But Carville has a worse problem. As everyone knows, liberalism depends on government spending and … we don’t have any money! In fact, as again we all know from two minutes on the Internet, we’re in hock to the Chinese up to our necks. Yes, yes, I know, they are co-dependent with us, but if we keep spending at current rates (or anything like them), the whole system will go tilt on both ends. We could be in a situation that will make 1933 look like 1993. And printing money only makes things worse. Read Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, a brilliant history of the Great Depression, if you don’t believe me.

So liberals are in a kind of Catch-22. That’s why The Tea Party Movement is in the ascendancy. Maybe you don’t like to hear it but, trust me, they are just as smart as you are and, moreover, have the honesty to tell the simple truth: We’re broke. That’s why health care and cap-and-trade (larceny anyway) are going down the tubes. And that’s why former schoolboy marxists like me are flirting with libertarianism. Sorry, James, but the liberal thing we grew up with has become just so square. It’s the squares who are hip now. And speaking of the Tea Party Movement, this “tea bagger” joke is just not funny at all. Not even a giggle. Can’t you and your buddy Begala come up with something better? Something not quite as overtly sexist. Why don’t you ask the South Park guys? They’re cool. They’re edgy and they take no prisoners. Maybe they can come up with something for you… Oh,wait. I think they’re libertarians.