Carville’s Presidential History Lesson

On Saturday former Clinton advisor James Carville took to YouTube and delivered what purported to be a “Presidential History Lesson.” It was a fairly typical Carvillian rant, yet quite revealing about how worried the Democratic establishment is about the damage the DSA insurgency is doing to their party. He begins his diatribe with the 2000 election and insists that every Democrat loss from then on was caused by leftist attacks on the centrist candidates the party nominated. Consequently, George W. Bush won in 2000 because Ralph Nader attacked Al Gore from the left. Likewise, Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders attacked her from the left.

From there his history lesson ties Nader and Sanders to the current insurgency that the Democratic Socialists have launched and poses the following question: “Is their solution to beat Republicans, to run against Republicans? No, their solution is to beat Democrats.” He then adds this observation: “These people are so f*cking stupid, I don’t know what to say about them.” It’s difficult to argue with that assessment, of course, but Carville’s memory of presidential election results from 2000 onward diverges from the facts. For example, he repeats the obligatory canard about the Supreme Court gifting the presidency to George W. Bush by “stopping the recount.” In fact, Gore was never ahead during the first count nor the two recounts.

Nonetheless, Carville insists that Ralph Nader received enough support in Florida to permit the judicial theft of the Sunshine State’s electoral college votes: “Rehnquist, Scalia, et al. steal the presidential election, of which the media establishment says, well, the court has spoken.” Next he describes how Sanders cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election: “Bernie Sanders is the reason that Donald Trump is president … So he runs the whole time against Hillary on the dreaded massive income growth, the dreaded reality that we’re dealing with in foreign policy, the massive knowledge of knowing what the hell goes on in the world. But no, we got to blow the whole goddamn thing up again.” Yet, as John Sides wrote in the Washington Post in 2017:

It’s a perennial question whether supporters of losing primary candidates will vote for their party’s nominee in the general election. So let’s compare the Democratic primary with the Republican primary. In the VOTER Survey, only 3 percent of those supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz reported voting for Hillary Clinton, as did 10 percent of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s supporters and 32 percent of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s supporters. So, Sanders supporters were as likely to vote for Trump as Rubio’s supporters were to vote for Clinton, and less likely than Kasich supporters were to vote for Clinton.