Interminable debates about November’s election notwithstanding, Third Way liberals like Carville really have been performing the same basic schtick for decades - its thrust being that Democrats win by scolding and/or disciplining a portion of their own base and lose whenever said portion is allowed to become too vocal. What struck me, though, was how tiresomely familiar it all sounded. As the New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu pointed out, 15 percent is actually a less than negligible chunk of the Democratic base - barely smaller than the African-American share of the electorate and in fact more sizable than Hispanics, which seems somewhat beside the point that Carville was, with characteristic hyperbole and imprecision, attempting to make. Nuance and careful analysis, for what it’s worth, have never exactly been Carville’s strong suits. With a few assists from a sympathetic Cuomo, Carville essentially regurgitated a version of the same narrative centrist Democrats have been peddling since they barely won last November: the crux of it being that a “noisy” and pronoun-obsessed “identity left,” representing about 15 percent of the party, has become an albatross round the necks of those in the sensible middle - imperiling their prospects with voters who are turned off by rhetoric about defunding the police. And so it was that I happened to stumble upon the iconically cadaverous face of a man who has not had the flicker of an original political insight or purchased a single skincare product since 1992.Īt a glance, very little about the segment was actually notable. Not counting myself among the dozen or so millennials who regularly watch network primetime shows, I hasten to add that I discovered the interview in question while scrolling through Twitter - that is, without the intercession of paid agitprop from personal injury lawyers, insurance companies, or miracle weight loss scams. Whatever your politics, I think we can all agree that the prospect of hearing Andrew Cuomo’s brother pick the brains of a Clinton-era apparatchik mainly known for yapping received centrist wisdom in a Louisiana accent doesn’t exactly scream “good vibes.”
By way of contrast, I submit that it’s nearly impossible to conjure a less euphonious sequence of words than “James Carville interviewed by Chris Cuomo.” It’s similarly difficult, even by the lowly standards of cable news, to imagine a program description that sounds less appetizing. Tolkien famously christened “cellar door” as the most aesthetically-pleasing phrase available in the English language.