So, the other day I received my daily fundraising appeal from the Biden team. Except today rather than the appeal coming from Kamala or Joe, it was signed by James Carville, the guy who ran both of Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns.
‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ was Carville’s signature campaign narrative for Clinton who beat George H. W. Bush in 1992 because the election occurred during a brief but dislocating economic downturn.
I have nothing against Carville per se, my problem is with his wife Mary Matalin, who is not only a political consultant, but ran the Bush campaign in 1992. She and Carville were married in 1993 ad both continue to have public appearances on internet media and TV. Matalin changed her registration from Republican to Libertarian in 2016, obviously because she couldn’t put up with the antics of Donald Trump.
I have nothing but loathing for Matalin, and the fact that she maintains some degree of public presence due to her marriage to Carville, as far as I’m concerned, he should also shut the fu*k up and go away.
The reason I can’t stand that creep Matalin is that the 1992 campaign that she directed for the GOP was the first Presidential contest in which the word ‘liberal’ was used not just in a critical or pejorative way. I heard Matalin on numerous TV interviews virtually spitting the word out as if it were not just a curse, but an unquestioned threat against the body politic and the normal or traditional ways in which political affiliations had always been described.
I don’t remember the last time I read or heard anything about the current political situation without seeing or hearing some reference to how diametrically opposed the two sides have become, how the country is split into an unreconcilable division that cannot be repaired. The favorite word which crops up again and again is ‘polarized,’ which means two utterly incompatible or irreconcilable positions with no basis for agreement or compromise in between.
This so-called split between Left and Right, or between liberal and conservative was taken to a new level by Donald Trump, who never says anything about anything without casting some verbal aspersions on the liberals who are also Socialists, Communists and/or thugs.
But again, the injection of angry, hateful rhetoric into political campaigns, in particular rhetoric which was used to deprecate the ideology of liberalism, was a contribution to the political lexicon made by Mary Matalin, and the last thing I need to be reminded of her nefarious strategy to get George H. W. Bush elected for a second term, is for her husband to be sending me a request to help Joe by chipping in more than the $200 I’m sending them every month from now until November of next year.
Yea, yea, I know, I know. It’s not politically correct to hold a spouse or partner responsible for something the other party does. But I don’t care. Take a look at the front page of Truth Social. Now take a look at the front page of Joe’s Twitter feed. And by the way, in his latest Truth Social feed, Trump was very restrained.
But this is what happens when a political party decides to communicate to the public not with some basic ideas about programs and goals, but with insults and angry screeches aimed at the other side.
If Trump’s appearance on the CNN Town Hall is any indication of how he’ll behave if he heads the GOP ticket next year, I’m tempted to send him a few bucks just to help him secure the nomination so that his fat rear end can be kicked in by Joe again.
And I am sure that after he joins three other men (Clay, Dewey, Stevenson) in losing a Presidential election twice, Trump will yell and scream about how the 2024 election was also ‘rigged.’
And maybe he’ll hire Mary Matalin to handle the PR.