…Carville closes on the note that has defined liberal electoral politics for nearly three decades—an obsession with “swing voters” that always leads to the same conclusion: to win, move to the right. If you don’t win, keep moving further right until you do. It couldn’t be more 1994 if Jerry Seinfeld showed up in a turquoise Geo Tracker to say, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.” Rather than make a pitch to a massive population of disaffected nonvoters, obsess over peeling off the odd Republican whose mind could be, but almost certainly will not be, changed.
The Obsolete Politics of James Carville
Jason Kempin/Getty Images The Clinton-era avatar of respectable Democratic politics continues to confuse elite opinion with public sentiment. Ahh, 1994. What a time to be alive. Ill Communication, Monster, and Superunknown were blaring from every boom box and Chevy Cavalier cassette deck. Final Fantasy 3 had a generation of socially awkward kids glued to a Super Nintendo.