Carville James - Were still right, theyre still wrong: the Democrats case for 2016

Dear Reader,

Im a guy who likes to traffic in metaphors and analogies. Some pundits use words like ideologically divisive or partisan entrenchment to describe our politics. But, for me, the tribal nature of American democracy can always be described with more colorful words, phrases like dogfight or pissin contest or pig slaughtera boucherie, as we say in Louisiana.

Maybe I got this literary nature from my momma, who went door-to-door selling encyclopedias. Maybe its just the way we Cajuns talk. But whatever the reason, last year, when I thought about the upcoming presidential election, the metaphor I chose was a grand celebration.

I envisioned a party. A literal Republican party.

I could see it all, clear and bright. There they were, all the Republicans in Congress whod been hoisted to victory in the 2014 midterm landslide.

And there were the Republican governorsall thirty-one of themstanding sentry by the bathroom doors, ready to pounce should a transgender person walk in.

And there were Hannity, Rush, and OReilly, surrounded by a bevy of blonde commentators, clinking glasses of a beautiful red punch served by white-gloved girls from the Junior League.

Oh, my friend, it was all so vivid! It was as clear as my crystal scotch glass, and the clearest vision of all was the bright center of the affair. There, huddled around the punch bowl, were the presidential candidates themselves. Not all the candidates were there, of course. Not the carnival barkers or the outsiders. Only the real candidates had been invited. Among them were five governors and four senators, the most promising batch of Republican contenders in a generation, with a collective 193 years of experience in elected office.

What were they doing? you ask. Well, they were laughing of course. They were guffawing their lily-white asses off.

And why not?

At the moment of this particular fiesta, the Republican Party controlled the House, the Senate, and the vast majority of state legislatures and governors mansions across the country.

Basically, all the GOP needed now was an easy 270 electoral votes on Election Day, and then theyd effectively control the entire government. It would be a Republican paradise, just like the 1950s. The GOP would be able to pollute what they wanted... deregulate what they wanted... and discriminate against whom they wanted! The only thing standing in their way was the Democratic competition, which happened to be a seventy-four-year-old socialist and a woman under FBI investigation.

So, yes, of course the candidates were laughingand laughing loudlyas they sipped their punch, a dazzling crimson punch with lime wedges and just the right amount of Veuve Clicquot champagne.

In fact, maybe it was all that celebrating that kept the GOP dull-eyed to the intruder in their midst. Maybe it was the laughteror the alcoholthat kept everyone from noticing there was an uninvited guest, a person who was just then landing his helicopter outside.

Indeed, someone was crashing this Republican party, but no one knew it until the ballroom doors flew open and in walked a man who promptly strode to the center of the party. He straddled the punch bowl, dropped his pants, and whipped out his member, which, he assured everyone, was very large.

Then Donald Trump pissed right into the punch bowl of the Republican Party.

As Im writing this, I do not know for absolutely sure that Trump will be the GOP presidential nominee. Its May now. The Republican National Convention is still three months away, and for all I know, the delegates in Cleveland could give the big prize to Trump or to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan or to the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney. Frankly, it does not matter.

Win, lose, or draw in Cleveland, Trump has presided over the death of the Republican Party as we knew it. In a race that seemed like a lock for the leading lights of the GOP, Trump found a rip in the body politic, an edge like one of those perforated lines on a ketchup packet that says, TEAR HERE . Except, in this case, the line divided the GOPs Establishment from its base, and Trump tore it away with his tiny stumpy fingers. He ripped the party straight through the gut.

Today we have a Republican Party where voters hate the party leaders, and the party leaders hate the voters. In fact, the magazine National Review is the closest thing the GOP has to an official publication, and one of their main contributors, Kevin Williamson, painted Trump supporters as loser drug addicts, writing that the truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.

Donald Trumps speeches make them feel good, he wrote. So does OxyContin.

Of course, the billion-dollar question of this election cycle has been: Why did this Republican civil war happen?

Why Trump?

Why now?

Well, there are probably a thousand explanations for Trumps hostile takeover of the GOP. There are demographic shifts and economic indicators that help explain it, and Ill get into many of them later on. But sometimes the best explanation is the simplest one: Trump happened because the Republican Party had been so wrong... for so long... about so many things. That also happens to be a core argument of this book:

Trump succeeded because the Republican Party failed.

For thirty years, Republican politicianseveryone from Reagan, to W. Bush, to Paul Ryanhave shown up in those hardscrabble towns that the National Review talked about. Theyve visited dilapidated bandstands and the union watering holes, places where they dont serve Veuve Clicquot champagnejust dollar beers and a shot. And those politicians have offered the voters the same bargain every time.

That bargain went something like this: