In an interview with a New York radio station, former (OG) Clinton campaign chief James Carville said that Democrats were facing near-insurmountable odds when it came to taking control of the Senate next November.
“I think right now most Democrats are trying to focus on the 2018 elections and trying to recruit people and keep incumbents, and you know I would say we have a pretty good chance of taking the House back,” Carville said in a conversation with AM 970’s John Catsimatidis. “The Senate is very, very difficult.
“The problem in the Senate,” he continued, “is we have a large number of seats we have to hold in states that Donald Trump carried. Indiana, Missouri, you know, places like that we have to hold seats. The only places where we have an opportunity for pick up are, you know, Nevada is pretty good. After that Arizona is less good, then you’re down to Texas and Alabama, and for Democrats to win the Senate back, they have to pick up three seats.”
Carville said the Democratic Party was currently experiencing a lack of leadership.
“If a party is out of power and we don’t have a presidential candidate,” he said, “there is no one going to be in charge until sometime in 2020 when we choose a presidential candidate.”
Carville is more insightful than most Democrats when it comes to the problems haunting LeftyLand, but even he is too optimistic about his party’s chances of taking back the House in 2018. One need only look at the Democrats’ run of terrible fortune in the four special elections that have taken place since November to see that this is a party that lacks more than leadership. They’ve run 0-4 in these special elections, despite a dramatic influx of mainstream media attention and national fundraising. The only message this party has right now is “REPUBLICANS BAD. TRUMP BAD.” It just doesn’t feed the dog. Or the donkey, in this case.
The fact is that the Democratic Party is facing an identity crisis right now, and their voters are so fractured that it could make a significant electoral victory impossible for some time to come. One half of the party wants to move back to the center, one half wants to go the Bernie Sanders way and totally immerse themselves in “progressivism.” One half thinks identity politics is killing the party; one half thinks that any candidate who takes a dime from Wall Street is a sellout. This is not the kind of fracture from which victories are made.
Trump, beset with constant negative coverage and the shadow of Russia hanging over everything he does, has not been successful in his mission to unite the country. But as long as the Democrats keep fumbling the ball, the Republican dominance of Washington will continue for a long time.
