Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

The Democrats got a wake-up call from a respected insider regarding the radical leftist trajectory of their party. While much focus was given to the prospect of Bernie Sanders losing to Trump, more moderate Democrats were ignored.

For anyone brave enough to venture inside of the Liberal media’s Big Tent, the experience can be compared to that of mind-altering drug use, alien abduction or joining a religious cult. In other words, there is no easy escape. The visitor is seduced by a number of repetitive messages, like Orange Man Bad, Open America’s (Racist) Border, and The Russians Are Coming! It would take a very special kind of authority to question such messages from the Left, which does not suffer heretics lightly. In fact, it doesn’t suffer them at all.

Thus it came as a bolt of lightning when James Carville, the lead strategist of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, went on a media whirlwind tour, hurling unmentionables inside of the Democrat’s echo chamber at a time when the party is still licking its wounds from the disastrous Iowa caucus. With no small amount of courage, Carville focused his attack on the radical progressives who have grabbed the spotlight in the donkey show.

"Sanders might get 280 electoral votes and win the presidency and maybe we keep the House. But there’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public."https://t.co/OEg42OPjy6 — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) February 7, 2020

“We have candidates … talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,” Carville said in an interview with Vox. “You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells… talking about that is not how you win a national election.”

Aside from specifically mentioning Sanders, Carville has enough political survival skills not to criticize by name the far-left progressives, comprised of freshmen minority lawmakers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. Yet the fact he was directing much of his ire towards this radical fringe was clear from the very first line of an opinion piece Carville wrote over the weekend.

“Political parties do not exist for factions to gain power over them and lose elections so long as the faction maintains its grip,” Carville wrote in the prestigious Financial Times. “They exist to win elections.”

In case anyone still had doubts as to who he was referring to, the next paragraph made it crystal clear: “Winning this election is all that matters – and the way to do it is not running some rat race to the furthest reaches of leftwing zombie land.”

The fact that the Democrats have called upon the Clinton-era strategist for a straight-shooting reality check, tinged with his brutal Southern drawl, points to some real desperation. Since the radical Left surged to power in the 2018 House race, the Democratic reaction to this political ground shift has gone from curiosity and bemusement to pure panic. Presently, those radical progressives plan to use Sanders as a Trojan horse for dumping their leftist ideas into the country.

The fact that this tiny group of agitators has managed to grab such a disproportionate amount of attention to itself and its agenda is yet another symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome. At no other time in US political history would the corporate media have lavished so much gratuitous attention on the far-Left’s Green New Deal, which includes, among many other grand plans, free college education and single-payer healthcare, all subsidized by a 70 percent tax rate for the super-rich. For most Americans, those are some of the main ingredients for baking a communist cake smack on top of America’s capitalist pie.

Despite all the hype and haw about the Democrats being the defenders of the working class, had they really wanted to introduce anti-corporate initiatives they would have done so during Barack Obama’s two-term presidency. But they did not, and that was no accident. After all, the Democrats (and Republicans) are representing many interests on Capitol Hill, but ‘Joe Six-Pack’ is certainly not on the A-list. As the journalist Greg Palast put it succinctly, the US provides “the best democracy money can buy.”

Also on rt.com Not a great look: Failed Iowa caucus app is deeply linked to self-declared winner Buttigieg… and Hillary Clinton

The curious timing of Carville’s lecture

The timing for James Carville, 75, being brought out of academic obscurity to lecture the Democratic Party – just days after the Iowa blowout – is conspicuous for exactly the issues he ignored. For a top-rate political strategist, his failure to discuss in any detail how the Democrats completely bungled their first major caucus on the road to Washington, for example, was odd, to say the least.

Instead, his greatest regret was that Iowa “didn’t attract the record turnout Democrats were expecting. Sirens should be screaming.” Well, sirens were certainly screaming, but for an entirely different reason, of course, and one that Carville had some duty to mention.

As is already known, the Iowa caucus imploded spectacularly after Shadow, the poorly named tech company that had ties to the Buttigieg campaign, failed at the simple task of providing the name of the winner in timely fashion.

Pete Buttigieg paid the firm Shadow Inc., who developed the Iowa voter tally app, tens of thousands of dollars in recent months.#MayorCheatpic.twitter.com/zxSRxHXRYr — Michael Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) February 4, 2020

Accusations of foul play reverberated across the heartland, as Sanders’ supporters and non-supporters alike accused the Democratic Party of – once again – deliberately sabotaging the democratic socialist and his chances at the White House. After all, tabulating the results of a state caucus is not exactly rocket science.

Not great optics here, folks:- Dems paid company literally called Shadow to create caucus app- Buttigieg campaign also paid Shadow, FEC records show- Caucus app fails- Buttigieg declares himself Iowa winner with no results — Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) February 4, 2020

It is important to keep in mind, however, that Bernie Sanders and the Iowa smash-up is not the only major story in Washington, despite the best efforts by the media to pretend that it is. In fact, the story of Sanders being short-changed in Iowa may actually rank second to that of Tulsi Gabbard, who has been essentially exiled to the democratic archipelago without so much as a peep from the media – no surprise since it was the media that exiled her in the first place.

If James Carville was not just another smooth-talking establishment gatekeeper, called up from the bullpen as the Democratic Party implodes, he would have floated the question as to why CNN excluded Gabbard from the debates on the road to the New Hampshire primaries. That certainly takes the question of ‘fake news’ to a whole new level.

But more to the point, why is Carville fretting about a 'red wave' inundating the Democratic Party when there are moderate candidates, like Tulsi Gabbard, who would never be confused as a socialist? After all, at one point she was polling ahead of three other Democratic contenders, yet her invitation to the debates went missing in the mail. This is certainly not a campaign pitch for Gabbard and her particular brand of politics, but it seems that her voice deserves to be heard just as much as the other contenders. Yet she has been sidelined, and nobody wants to talk about it, not even James Carville.

Tulsi ahead of three people who were permitted to participate in the NH debate last night. The conscious, malevolent exclusion of her is so obvious and despicable -- it would be nice if more Bernie people called this out https://t.co/iVoKjPd6jQ — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 8, 2020

At the same time, it would have been refreshing had Carville mentioned the ugly irony of the establishment flipping the proverbial bird to a female candidate who saw combat in Iraq , yet happily changing the debate rules for mega-wealthy media mogul and late horse to the primary race, Michael Bloomberg. If there were a political story today that better exposes the rot eating away at the very foundation of American democracy, I personally cannot imagine it.

All things considered, James Carville performed his primary duty, which was that of establishment gatekeeper, remarkably well. He explained, with no deficit of colorful expletives, why the American people should reject a left-leaning guy like Bernie Sanders, an “ideological fanatic,” who, together with the radical progressives, threatens to shake up the Democratic Party to its very foundation. Of course, any sort of political change should only derive from one of the establishment-approved contenders, in the convenient Pringles shape of a Buttgieg, Biden or Warren.

As for the unfortunate setbacks of a blotched caucus, and the disappearance of an anti-interventionist candidate from the debate lineup, well, apparently those issues aren’t really so important. After all, if they were, top political strategist James Carville certainly would have told the American people about them. Right?



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