Look, I can admire someone who shares government secrets with the whore whose toes he sucks as much as the next guy. Really, I can. But that doesn't mean that I have to believe that their political predictions are worth a friggin' thing.As a matter of fact, the last person whose political predictions should be taken seriously are those of political consultants. This is because they are hacks. Each and every fucking one of them. The only difference between Karl Rove and James Carville is they way that their waistlines expand relative to their hair loss.
And the only thing worse than a political consultant is a former political consultant. The retirees that you so often see on cable news are so boringly predictable that they're almost perfect for that format. You'll never learn anything at all during their segments, but you will wonder how they became so successful when they're so bad at lying.
Which brings me to Dick Morris, who manages to give even other political consultants douche chills. They guy is a cross between a whore and a vampire, yet not bright enough to make either quality as entertaining as they should be. While most politicos at least have enough moral bearings to work for one party, Morris was responsible for giving the world both Trent Lott and Bill Clinton. Have you been able to stop thanking him for that yet?
Even more entertaining than his incredibly illogical television appearances are Morris' books, which are almost impossibly wrong. Dick was the dude who penned an entire tome predicting that the 2008 presidential campaign would be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Condolezza Rice, which probably would have been more fun to watch than the debacle America wound up with.
Let's listen to Morris' predictions for this November, shall we?
Stanley Greenberg and James Carville claim that the Republican Party has peaked too soon. Incredibly, Greenberg says that “when we look back on this, we’re going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened.” Stan’s only claim to expertise in the 1994 elections, of course, is that he’s the guy who blew it for the Democrats. Right after that, President Clinton fired both of the flawed consultants and never brought them back again.Uh, Dick? Maybe you're an imperfect messenger when it comes to disparaging the circumstances under which people were fired by Bill Clinton. Just sayin'. As it turned out, there were "flawed consultants" all about
the Clinton White House.
Their latest pitch is that the highpoint of the GOP advance was the Scott Brown election and that, from here on, things will “improve slightly” for the Democrats.Roughly 98% of the last paragraph was utter horseshit.
Once again, Carville and Greenberg are totally misreading the public mood. Each time the Republican activists battle, they become stronger. Their cyber and grass roots grow deeper. The negatives that attach to so-called “moderate” Democratic incumbents increase. And each time Obama, Reid and Pelosi defy public opinion and use their majorities to ram through unpopular legislation, frustration and anger rise.
Were Obama’s ambitions to slacken, perhaps a cooling-off might eventuate. But soon the socialist financial takeover bill will come on the agenda, followed by amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-and-trade and card-check unionization. Each bill will trigger its own mobilization of public opposition and add to the swelling coalition of opposition to Obama and his radical agenda.
I might be completely alone in this, but I believe that Obama's health insurance giveaway is going to matter not at all by November. Voters aren't just exceptionally dumb, they're possessed of extraordinarily short memories. Most Americans can't remember who was thrown off Dancing With the Stars last night, so they aren't going to vote their March rage in November.
Besides, I don't see the passage of a bill that the Democrats have been promising for 70 years as being a liability for them. If you're surprised that they introduced and passed it, then you're too retarded to vote in the first fucking place.
If I were a Republican, I would be worried in the extreme about "the socialist financial takeover bill." The last time I checked, bankers are slightly less popular than child molesters. I'm fairly sure that the GOP would prefer not to be painted by the Democrats as "fighting for Wall Street against Main Street" and opposing financial reform - socialist takeover or not - will do that.
Immigration reform is another almost impossible corner that Republicans can be painted into. We've already seen this once already, back in 2007-08. When the GOP killed McCain-Kennedy, which the Bush administration supported, Hispanic voters revolted and opened states like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada for Obama. That's not my opinion, that's a fact, as any look at the flip in the percentage of the GOP Latino vote will show you.
If the Democrats are at all smart and interested in holding Harry Reid's Senate seat and possibly winning John McCain's, they'll re-introduce McCain-Kennedy this summer and force McCain to vote against it. That will almost certainly finish the Republicans off in Arizona, which was much closer in '08 than it had any business being.
As for cap and trade and card check, they're dead this year. There's no way that vulnerable Blue Dogs are going to walk the plank for Pelosi and Reid so soon after the health care vote. If the Democrats introduce either before November, they're dumber than I think they are, which is plenty.
Meanwhile, the political process will generate more and more strong Republican challengers. We have yet to see if former Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin or Dino Rossi of Washington state will emerge to challenge Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). Better House candidates will decide to capitalize on the momentum and will jump into the race and Republican donors will come out of hiding, their efforts catalyzed by the growing optimism about GOP chances.Maybe. Or maybe we'll see those candidates try to appease the Tea Partiers and run so far to the right that they alienate swing voters. That's exactly what we're seeing with the whoring of John McCain. Let's be generous and say that they Tea Party represents 20% of the vote. That leaves you 31% short of what you need to win.
And that assumes that the tea baggers even turn out to vote past the primary at all. If, say, McCain wins the primary against J.D Hayworth (as I expect him to, so Hayworth is history's biggest loser), how many of the Tea Partiers do you suppose will vote for him? But McCain will have antagonized his centrist base to the point that they'll likely vote for the Democrats. If you see that in enough districts and states, the Tea Partiers actually cost more overall votes than they bring.
Will the rise in economic growth and job creation — if they continue — offset the Republican gains? Not very likely. Remember Bill Clinton’s 1994 experience. Even though the recession had officially ended in the quarter before he took office and he proudly pointed to the 5 million new jobs that had been created during the first two years of his presidency, Clinton got no bounce from the jobs issue or the economy. Even in the election of 1996, the economy was only marginally a source of strength for the Democratic president. It wasn’t until impeachment that the job growth that had been ongoing since he took office began to work heavily in his favor with the public. The hangover from a recession, and certainly from one as violent as this, lasts a long time. A very long time.Morris has a pretty selective memory when it comes to 1994. Bill Clinton and the Democrats had a litany of problems in '94 that Dick ignores. Not only did Clinton fail to pass health care reform, he passed a massive tax increase in his '93 budget. Then there was gays in the military.
Oh, and Whitewater and Paula Jones were starting to rear their ugly heads in the fall of '94. Add that to a long list of Democratic scandals, like the House Banking and Post Office affairs and the antics of Danny Rostenkowski and you start getting a clearer picture of why '94 ended up being '94.
That's not true now, particularly when you consider that Nevada Republican senator John Ensign is almost certain to be indicted before November. Like it or not, most of the scandals of late happen to be Republican ones.
And all this assumes that things will, indeed, improve. Worries about inflation loom large and concerns that higher taxes and interest rates will trigger a new downturn also abound. As long as the deficit is as high as it is, there is no solid foundation for a sustained period of economic growth.That assumes a lot of things happening in seven months that almost certainly won't. I'm not saying that they won't happen at all, but they won't happen by the first Tuesday in November. Policy just doesn't work it's way through the economy that quickly, as anyone who knows anything about anything will tell you.
Finally, Obama is now responsible for healthcare in America. When premiums rise, it will be his fault. When coverage is denied, it will be on his watch.
When Medicare cuts kick in, it will be Obama who gets the blame.
Carville’s last book touted “40 more years of Democrats.” Now he dreams of a loss of “only” 25 seats in the House and “six or seven” senators. But these are pipe dreams. Republicans will gain more than 50 House seats and at least 10 in the Senate, enough to take control in both chambers. That’s reality.That's a fucking fantasy. Morris is predicting the single largest vote shift in two years since 1946, when millions of American soldiers were comining home to face a job market crippled by continuing wage and price controls. Say what you will about the incompetence of the Obama administration, but this decidedly ain't '46, where the Democrats lost 54 House seats and 11 in the Senate. The GOP built up to '94 in 1990 and '92, gaining sets in both years and that's not happening now.
Dick Morris is either lying, psychotic or stupid. How he manages to get and keep a job with this kind of thinking never fails to astound me.
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