One of my all-time favorite political people, of the non-office-holder type, is James Carville, coming to my attention as lead strategist for Bill Clinton in 1992, and has since remained in the forefront of talking politics in America and abroad ever since. He has a great zense of self-deprecating humour which adds to his appeal.
Although he seems to fallen out of favor among the supposedly astute Democrats nowadays he does have a sense of right-and-wrong when it comes to not only politics but life itself.

And he’s been involved a way-long time in one of those weird-ass, political-mixed couplings — he a Democrat is married to Republican strategist Mary Matalin — and they seem happy for it (nothing like the farcial, cruel Kellyanne Conway/George Conway duo).
In a reveal from a public event in February 2019, the couple discussed themselves:

Matalin bemoaned that political mixing like theirs is so rare today that their marriage probably wouldn’t have happened if they had been born to later generations.

“Democrats and Republicans don’t speak to each other, which is anathema to me,” Matalin said.

Clearly brains was part of Republican-turned-Libertarian Matalin’s attraction to Carville, a Democrat.

“He is a genius,” Matalin said.
“He is frequently wrong, but that doesn’t make him not a genius.”

For his part, Carville, who was the campaign manager for Democratic President Bill Clinton, crossing the political aisle to date the deputy campaign manager of Clinton’s opponent, George. H.W. Bush, was in part a necessary strategy.

“If you’re as ugly as I am, you can’t just date anyone,” he quipped.
“You’ve got to expand the playing field. And, I think I did pretty good.”

In an interview published this morning at Vox, Carville discussed some potent political points for the Democratic party:

Progressives will take exception to some of Carville's analysis here. But I think many would heartily endorse *one* of his critiques of the Democrats: The party needs to stop being polite, and start calling the GOP a party for insurrectionary pedophiles.https://t.co/hr5W7QhGCE pic.twitter.com/F5rsGDN71L

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) April 27, 2021

Some snips:

We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice. What I’m saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people — including most Black people, by the way — because it signals that you’re trying to talk around them.
This “too cool for school” shit doesn’t work, and we have to stop it.

There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it ain’t the majority. And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18-percent of the population controls 52-percent of the Senate seats.
That’s a fact. That’s not changing. That’s what this whole damn thing is about.
…
Take someone like Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s obviously very bright. She knows how to draw a headline. In my opinion, some of her political aspirations are impractical and probably not going to happen. But that’s probably the worst thing that you can say about her.

Now take someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the new Republican congresswoman from Georgia.
She’s absolutely loonier than a tune. We all know it.
And yet, for some reason, the Democrats pay a bigger political price for AOC than Republicans pay for Greene.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. And it’s ridiculous because AOC and Greene are not comparable in any way.
…
Here’s the deal: No matter how you look at the map, the only way Democrats can hold power is to build on their coalition, and that will have to include more rural white voters from across the country. Democrats are never going to win a majority of these voters. That’s the reality.
But the difference between getting beat 80 to 20 and 72 to 28 is all the difference in the world.

So they just have to lose by less — that’s all.

Go and read the whole interview, well-worth your tine, Carville is a trip

He’s always been half-a-loop ahead — “Let me show you how it’s done…”

“Cajun style…”

(Illustration: James Carville, found here).