Ariana: Early Advice for '08 Hopefuls: Beware the Consultants! (Carville)

[chimpymustgo]

November 20, 2006
Arianna Huffington


So another season of Dancing with the Stars has ended -- but fret not ballroom fans, the Democrats' '08 presidential waltz is already underway.
Performing a deft two-step, John Edwards and Barack Obama have adopted the running-for-president-under-the-guise-of-a-book-tour approach, with Edwards earning extra style points for saying of Obama: "I hope he runs.


I think he should run." Classy. Is there an Edwards-Obama '08 Tango in their future?

-snip-

The rest of the sure-to-be-crowded field is still practicing its steps, though it is all-but-certain that Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Wes Clark, and John Kerry are all at least thinking about getting ready to Rumba. With Al Gore rested and ready to do a late-entry Quickstep.

But whoever ends up Cha Cha-ing onto the 2008 primary dance floor needs to remember one thing above all else: beware of the political consultants -- they can only trip you up! In fact, ridding the party of the consultants who have led them down the wrong path again and again should be the #2 item on the Democrats' '06-'08 to-do list -- #1 being getting us out of Iraq.

And the Dems should start the purge by kicking James Carville to the curb, once and for all. His inane -- insane? -- remarks about Howard Dean are all the proof needed that the time has come to send the Agin' Cajun to the Political Consultants' Retirement Home. (Dream scenario: he gets a room with Bob "0-for-8" Shrum.)

Carville's attack on Dean was utter nonsense. The reason the Dems "only" picked up 29 House seats isn't because the Democratic National Committee didn't spend enough money; it's because too many Democratic candidates didn't spend enough time talking about Iraq.

-snip-

edited for spelling and length

[greenbriar]

1. love it and soooooooo true

kicked and RECED

[David Zephyr]

2. K&R.

:thumbsup:

[Riverman]

3. AGREED: No Carville, No Schrum, No Estrich, and all the other

Loser consultants that CNN and MSNBC like to trot out to represent the Dems. I so cannot stand those people, Schrum and Estrich in particular, and now Carville for being an idiot. Talk about sleeping with the enemy! Howard Dean, who did more than Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton to help the democrats take over Congress, had Joe Trippi in his '04 run and I would love to see him "energize" the new base of the democrats - those of us who are angry about the shredding of the constitution, corruption, Iraq, Torture, war profiteers, Global Warming, destruction of the environment, especially the oceans, civil rights for all and the "Do-Nothing" congress.

I would be for Edwards or Gore with Obama as VP in '08 - NO Hillary! She is a republican in drag!

If Gore runs, he should have no image consultants - they did him no good in '04 - when Al Gore is himself, he is most engaging and smart. He is by no means perfect. But, Global Warming will be the issue for the people of this planet to fix in the next fifty years, or it is all over! Global warming will solve all other problems, if not halted! It will require a massive undertaking that the people of earth have yet to comprehend - more than the combined efforts of WWII to stop facism, or any other collective human effort to date!

[Robbien]

4. Why pay Carville anything more. His advice is always the same.

Carville & Co always say: don't make waves, move the party to the right, ignore the base, and pay everything you've got to the high price consultants.

Boring. Yeah, kick them to the curb.

[The Count]

5. Also, no war supporting candidates!

[chimpymustgo]

6. Perhaps we should also rule out candidates who were not elected to anything

that would put them in a position to vote on such things.

Voters can make up their own minds, you know.

[w4rma]

7. link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/early-advice-for-08-hope_b_34542.html

[laundry_queen]

8. Good one. K&R'd. n/t

[flpoljunkie]

9. NRCC spents tens of thousands for last minute robocalls to trash Dems in 24 House races.

This last minute trashing with no good way to let the voters know what was going on may well have made the difference--rather than the DNC not dumping $6 million into last minute TV ads.

[flpoljunkie]

10. From tpmmuckraker: Did Nasty Robo Calls Win Elections?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001974.php

Did Nasty NRCC Robo Calls Win Elections?

By Paul Kiel - November 10, 2006, 4:39 PM

As we did our best to document, the National Republican Congressional Committee was responsible for repetitive, often harrassing robo calls in more than two dozen districts across the country in the runup to the election.

In at least seven of those districts, the Democrat failed to unseat the incumbent by only a couple thousand votes. The NRCC's calls may have been the difference in those races.

Consider, for example, Florida's 13th District, where Christine Jennings is currently locked in a recount battle. The final tally shows her down 386 votes. In the last three weeks of the election, the NRCC spent $58,326.78 on robo calls against Jennings, according to FEC reports. At five to fifteen cents a call, the NRCC bought itself between 388,000 and 1.17 million calls in the district. Approximately 250,000 people voted in the 13th on Tuesday.

<>While the calls hit a number of close races, most worrying is that there are a number of extremely close races where they were a factor and the Democrat lost.

-- In New York's 25th District, Dan Maffei lost by less than 4,000 votes out of a total of more than 200,000. As this local news report shows, voters got repeat calls, leading many to think that they were being harrassed by the Maffei campaign. You can hear one of the calls here.

-- In Illinois' 6th District, Tammy Duckworth, who was the victim of the NRCC's robo call campaign (listen to a voter's glutted answering machine here), also lost by approximately 4,000 votes.

-- In Pennsylvania's 6th District, Lois Murphy lost by 3,000 votes. As the AP reported, her district was inundated by the calls.

And there's also Eric Massa, who narrowly lost in New York's 29th (less than 6,000 votes), Diane Farrell in Connecticut (down slightly more than 6,000), and Phillip Kellam in Virginia's 2nd (down less than 5,000 votes) -- all of whom were victims of the NRCC's robo call effort.

[flpoljunkie]

11. Altho list of targeted 24 House candidates not comprehensive, Carville listed two of them in his

tirade--Christine Jennings in Florida and Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania. Perhaps Tessa Hafen of Nevada was targeted, too.

[flpoljunkie]

13. Per DailyKos poster, Carville's other example, Tessa Hafen, was also targetetd by robocalls.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/11/9/15521/6160/59#c59

Superior GOP GOTV or same old dirty tricks?

Republicans managed to win 14 of 23 congressional races decided by two percentage points or less and 13 of 19 races decided by 5000 votes or less. That's a testament to the durability of the 72 Hour Program.

I think it was mostly hype this year. Some of the races the GOP won by 2% including mine in NV-03 were plagued by repeated robocalls and the anti-immigration slime machine. A few undecided independents we phoned on Sunday reported repeated annoying calls about Hafen that they thought came from her campaign. A few people may not have voted at all because of them. Porter's final ad saturating the airwaves coupled the usual lies with a grotesquely altered photo of Tessa Hafen and his slime machine also caused some protest drop-off.

In a news story with a photo of a few Repub Hill staffers using cell phones on a sun-drenched patio, Porter's manager claimed that 100 activists were flown in for the final GOTV in our district. I really doubt there were that many as we saw little evidence of them on the last weekend.

....the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR 1933

by Tailspinterry on Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 03:20:59 PM PST

[kentuck]

12. The "consultants" advised Kerry not to respond to Swift Boat ads...

That may have lost the election for him?

[wisteria]

14. All the consultants need to go. They are all out of touch, old and dusty. n/t