'Fire. Indict. Fight,' Democratic strategist James Carville wrote in an op-ed. Carville: Obama should 'panic'

Democratic strategist James Carville has just one word of advice for President Barack Obama: Panic.

In a CNN op-ed, Carville said Tuesday’s two special election results are a warning to the White House – and a sign the president must make drastic changes now to stave off the Republican momentum.


It’s time to panic, he wrote.

“People often ask me what advice I would give the White House about various things,” Carville wrote on Wednesday. “Today I was mulling over election results from New York and Nevada while thinking about that very question. What should the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic.”

Carville said Democrats are “past sending out talking points” and said he would tell the president, “The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed.”

Carville’s advice: “Fire. Indict. Fight.”

Obama must fire someone – “No – fire a lot of people” — because the current team is just not working, Carville wrote.

“This may be news to you but this is not going well,” he wrote. “For precedent, see Russian Army 64th division at Stalingrad. There were enough deaths at Stalingrad to make the entire tea party collectively orgasm.”

Following the precedent of Bill Clinton, who fired many people in 1994, Ronald Reagan, who fired most of his campaign staff in 1980, and George W. Bush, who showed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the door, would give Americans a sense that Obama is actually trying to do something to fix the economy, Carville added.

“It’s not going to work with the same team, the same strategy, and the same excuses,” he wrote.

His next piece of advice is to indict people and hold them responsible for the country’s current economic state. If Attorney General Eric Holder can’t offer good explanations as to the state of these investigations, “fire him too.”

“Demand answers to why no one has been indicted,” he wrote. “Mr. President, people are livid. Tell people that you, too, are angry and sickened by the irresponsible actions on Wall Street that caused so much suffering. Do not accept excuses. Demand action now.”

Obama must also “make a case like a Democrat” and fight the “Republican austerity garbage,” Carville noted. And when making the case, the president must stick to his story, Carville wrote.

If Obama cannot course correct, the country could soon have a “crazy person” in the White House, Carville said.

“As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation,” he wrote. “I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.”