Radio Free America: How James Carville could cost Democrats the election

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James Carville loves weighing in on how Democrats are blowing the midterms. In July 2025, he said they were in shambles. This past July, he said they were nominating candidates who couldn’t win. Last month, he said their political messaging wasn’t meeting the moment.

Well, it sure seems like ignoring him is working. Right now, the party’s in an excellent position with less than six weeks until the midterms. Our friends at The Downballot produced this graphic with a number of indicators showing that if the election were held today, the results would be somewhere between “good” and “best midterm in living memory” for the Dems. 

Carville’s reputation comes from his work on Bill Clinton’s winning presidential campaign. But Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl winning quarterback; that doesn’t make him the best in the league. Clinton was so talented that even Mark Penn couldn’t sink his campaign as he did his wife’s in 2008.

Carville hasn’t done much work in America this millennium, but he still has a sterling reputation among boomer Democrats who are grateful that he helped end the party’s losing streak in 1992. Which is probably why he’s participating in a system that could prevent Democrats from winning in November.

Via Silver Bulletin

Republicans have a massive disadvantage in this election with one notable exception: cash. Thanks to Donald Trump’s unprecedented corruption, they can outspend Democrats up and down the ballot.

Faced with this, Democrats are increasingly relying on text spam. Yeah, those annoying messages you get every day. Who even falls for that crap? Stanford professor Adam Bonica was wondering the same thing, so he looked into it and found that by preying on boomers text spam consultants can raise a lot of money.

There are many problems with this strategy. For one, it’s deeply unethical — Bonica found some heartbreaking examples of seniors that spent more than what their homes were worth. It also doesn’t really help Democrats. Many of the groups that use these tactics aren’t even campaigns but outside groups that seem to spend little on actual electioneering and mostly fund their own operations. And even when the campaigns themselves use these tactics, most of the money they raise ends up going to the consultants raising the money. 

Bonica even found that the tactics turn off younger potential donors who hold off on giving to campaigns because they don’t want to be inundated with spam. It’s all a toxic mess that wastes money that should go to making up the money gap with Republicans. 

He found that of the $678 million raised through spam, only $11 million actually went to making the case for Democratic candidate. You think Keisha Lance Bottoms couldn’t use some of that wasted $665 million right now?

And do you know who has lent his name to these spam campaigns? That’s right, James Carville. Thanks to a lazy data vendor, I get texts meant for my mother (exact age: none of your business! But a boomer), and I’ve heard from him three times in the last month alone.

Maybe I’m being too tongue-in-cheek by saying Carville alone will cost Democrats the midterms. But he is part of a predatory system that ends up making the Democratic cash disadvantage worse and gives Republicans a fighting chance in spite of their deep unpopularity. I choose to believe, however, that he doesn’t know just how unethical the system he’s participating in is.

So I’m issuing a challenge to James Carville. The people getting scammed obviously trust you. And you love needling the Democratic establishment when you think they’re screwing up. Now’s the time to go on cable news (I know you have bookers’ numbers!) and say Democrats need to cut the shit. You should tell your friends that doing so would fill their budget gaps ethically and responsibly, maybe taking in less money on gross but more on net as they cut out the wasteful consultants.

And it’s possible! Before I was a newsletterer, I helped raise millions of dollars for state legislative candidates. I pulled it off by being real with people, by telling them what their donations meant and why they were so important for those races. No high-pressure sales tactics, no spam and no annoying texts. If I can do it, then why can’t you? I know it’s been a while, but you can help Democrats win elections again.

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AROUND AMERICA

• I’m a big fan of campaign songs. Even though it’s more than 50 years old, you have to admit that “Nixon Now” is still an earworm. So it’s heartening to see David Jolly and Gwen Graham do some Latino voter outreach thusly.

• If you work in politics long enough, you know that you only hire paid canvassers when you’re out of options. They’re usually the political d-team and are likely to dump all your literature in the trash and then head to a bar. And in Tom Tiffany’s case, after the bar, the canvasser drove drunk and hit a guy on a bike.

• Republicans need paid canvassers right now because, as former Marquette (Mich.) County GOP Chair Jackson Karki noted, they can’t get anyone to volunteer right now. After the state party gave him the boot for airing their dirty laundry, he bemoaned the death of a party that embraced debate, open discussion and integrity. Which are not terms I use to describe the cult of personality surrounding Trump! 

• Kansas Republican Ann Reinhart recently got cut off by the party after some truly horrific allegations of past child abuse came out, giving Democrat Jeff Pittman a shot at a seat that went to Trump by 17 points.

• New Hampshire’s Libertarian Party, which has close ties to Republican State House leadership, called for assassinating Democrats 

• Pseudonymous finance wonk James C. Medlock found a loophole in the new Medicaid work requirements that lets recipients keep their coverage if they manage to gamble enough on sports. They’re calling it the first ever positive use of DraftKings.

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INTERNET STUFF I LIKED THIS WEEK

One problem I have with political alignment quizzes is that they’re worded too obviously. Like yeah, I support civil rights, I’m a liberal, I get it. But Searchlight’s new Political Neighborhoods one avoids this trap with a set of questions that actually force you to think. Even though it ultimately pegged me as a liberal yuppie, I appreciated that it made me work for the title. 

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BOOK CLUB

Image courtesy of Knopf Publishing

Did you see that noted boss emailer Bret Stephens is worried that the National Book Awards have gone woke? No, it’s true. Apparently, most of the nominees are not white men and also have vaguely leftish politics. Either right-wingers are not naturally drawn to the arts, especially to a medium that requires a facility with interiority, or the National Book Awards have fallen victim to the dreaded woke mind virus.

One issue with his review is that he hasn’t found time to read any of the nominees. Sadly, he is forced to attend ideas festivals at the expense of picking up a book. Thankfully, I just finished Valeria Luiselli’s “Beginning Middle End.” This modern exploration of ancient myth, narrative, art, change and our relationship with the natural world is deeply indebted to the classics, so much so that the works of Pliny the Elder are a critical motif. It’s a welcome addition to the Western canon, which right-wingers in particular have taken an interest in. Sadly for Stephens, Luiselli was born in Mexico, so it’s simply too ideological for his taste. You don’t have to make the same mistake, though!

BTW Bret, you can complain to my boss at rgibbs@heartlandsignal.com if you think I did you dirty.

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HELP US OUT

The good news is that last week I found out that Friend of the Newsletter Rodger Sherman is doing his own weekly NFL recaps now. The bad news is that I will not want to read about how badly Jameis Winston overthrew his receivers. 

As for this week, I have to admit that Bret Stephens has a point — where are the great conservative American authors. As an unabashed fan of Saul Bellow, I can appreciate the oeuvre. Are there any living American authors worth a damn who voted for Trump? The closest I’ve come to finding one is Zoe Valdes. Email me and tell me what you think!

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