40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation [Hardcover]

James Carville (Author), Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2009

The number-one New York Times bestselling author and political strategist James Carville offers a rousing call-to-arms to Democrats, whose reclaiming of the White House in 2008 points to the emergence of a Democratic majority that will last for years to come.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known for his acerbic, take-no-prisoners style, Democratic political consultant and pundit Carville (Take it Back) does not pull punches in this aggressive manifesto. Surveying the political landscape, the bull-headed liberal finds the right pursuing "ridiculous positions" and "pontificating on silly-ass things that have been decided a long time ago" like global warming, WMD in Iraq, abstinence-based education, and rumors of Obama's secret Muslim heritage. Despite its provocative packaging, and some obvious recycling (yes, Bill O'Reilly and Fox News get a thorough rebuke), Carville has a serious message and some compelling analysis. Examining the demographics in the last election and the Bush administration's record, Carville concludes that the Democrats will easily defeat the opposition for years to come. A lead campaign strategist for both of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns, Carville has plenty to say regarding Hillary Clinton's failed presidential run (though he's careful to note that she's the politician "I admire the most"). He also believes that if Pres. Obama follows the path set by Bill Clinton, enacting "solid, sensible policies," Americans will accept him as "the Real Deal." Pitched squarely in the southpaw strike zone, Carville hasn't mixed up his standard delivery, but he should find a larger audience of moderates than he has in recent years.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The election of Obama in 2008 was partly due to a shift in American demographics that will favor the Democrats for the next 40 years, proclaims Democratic political advisor Carville. American voters are younger and more ethnically and racially diverse, a trend that favors Democrats. The old canard that young Democrats are prone to switch parties as they age and pay taxes doesn’t stand up against data showing a drop in Republican vote share. Republicans have sealed their current fate by persisting in ignoring the political middle and appealing to their ultraconservative base. Carville points to failed policies of the Bush administration and Republican philosophies: a reputation for fiscal conservatism ruined by record deficits to pay for the war in Iraq, the failure of tax policies favoring the wealthy and corporations to improve the economy, and the horrifying reality of an unresponsive government in the face of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. What the Democrats have in their favor is demographics, techno-communications savvy, and the activism of grassroots supporters. Carville argues that contrary to the myth that Republicans are better on the economy, Democrats have more often delivered strong economies while providing needed social programs. The big challenge for Obama and future Democratic political efforts will be to restore confidence in government. He suggests emphasis on accountability and a “progressive patriotism” with broad appeal to Americans. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416569898
• ISBN-13: 978-1416569893
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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61 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars WOW - So Wrong - So Quickly, January 23, 2010

By 

Enigma "Cheers" (Washington, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation (Hardcover)

I received this book the day before Republican Scott Brown was elected as the newest Senator for the bluest state in the union, Massachusetts. His election has to rank as one of the biggest historical upset of recent times; this of course came on the heals of Virginia and New Jersey governorships being won by Republicans and rather than the Democrats "ruling" for 40 more years as Carville predicts it appears that they cannot even keep the momentum going for 10 months.

The book was published in May and by November virtually all of Carville's predictions had fallen flat, many of them coming to the exact opposite fruition but that is not that surprising. Carville is a far left partisan, for him ideology comes first and then facts if they happen to fit his beliefs. Most of the times he simply twists, distorts or denies any inconvenient evidence to help insulate some of his cherished beliefs.

There are many errors in this book and many down-right contradictions; Was McCain "The farthest from being a Bush Republican [pg ix] OR was McCain a Bush clone pushing his agenda as the rest of the book kept saying? While I could pick error after error such as Carville attacking Fox News saying that "Only a massive liar or blatant hypocrite would dare argue" (42) what Fox News claimed about Obama, for instance Fox "Said Obama was educated in a Muslim Madrassa" (42). If Carville or his assistance that wrote most of this book had looked into this they would have found the source of the claim was the "a massive liar" according to Carville (NOT ME) Barrack Hussein Obama, since he wrote that in his autobiography and Fox was quoting from that book. Nice going James, maybe that is why Obama has that weird look on face on the cover of the book, sort of like, get your hand off of me punk.

There were three main narratives (his word not mine) or stories made up by Carville to help push his ideology that were blatantly false but keep getting repeated. Much like Goebels Big Lie concept, Carville believes if you tell a whopper and then keep telling it over and over again pretty soon some people are going to believe it. Let's hope for our sake that Americans have just a modicum more intelligence than Carville thinks we do.

Narrative #1 Gore won Florida - The people who actually believe that are the same type that think the earth is flat, the holocaust never happened and the aliens are coming to invade today. Sorry Mr. Carville, you "wanted" Gore to win but he didn't, now you go about making up wholesale BS such as on page 108 where you state 180,000 felons had been improperly scrubbed form the voting rolls. WOW that's a huge number, but you foot-noted it so I looked it up and guess what your source didn't say that, they actually said 33,214 felons were removed from the voting rolls AS REQUIRED BY LAW.

The facts of Florida are clear, in every recount ever done Bush won by more votes than the official total, but wait a second Carville, did say the NORC said that "Under a full accounting" Gore would win. That is true, but you never explained that the NORC looked at counting the ballots 12 different ways. 11 out of the 12 scenarios had Bush winning only one had Gore and they called it the "full accounting" scenario. Aren't you just a little bit curious what that method was??????? I was so I looked it up, it meant that every ballot that was cast and the vote or non-vote could not be determined 100% (hanging chad for Bush, no vote for president, double punched for Bush and Buchanan, etc.) EVERY ONE of these ballots would then automatically count for Gore, and then he would have won. Sounds fair to me (banging head on table), you go Carville.

Carville forgot to mention about the 170,000+ overseas military ballots that were never counted, the early calling of the state for Gore that even Democratic pollsters Said cost Bush at least 10,000 and up to 20,000 votes in the panhandle region. The blatant politicking by the Florida State Supreme Court to rewrite the election rules AFTER the election and to force only Democratic counties to be recount. The Democratic parties' multi-million dollar campaign to find all the disenfranchised voters that couldn't vote that turned up just 11 people and only 2 that could actually be verified as attempting to vote and the irony was that these 2 were White elderly Republicans.

The bottom line is Bush won (and I didn't vote for him, so this is about my guy winning) it's just best to admit the facts and not live in the fantasy land. Now if we really want to look at voting irregularities what about Ohio in 2008 when a record 146,000 homeless people voted (hmmmm homeless population according to homeless advocates who always overestimate the actual number puts Ohio's homeless population between 32-37,000) Or what about mysterious Franken ballots that kept turning up in the backseat and trunks of officials cars. Yeah they misplaced a ballot box that surprise, surprise contained 415 ballots - and a remarkable 413 of those ballots were votes for Franken, nope nothing suspicious there. Imagine if these events had been for a Republican candidate the news would still be talking about instead it is quietly pushed under the rug.

Narrative #2 We do much better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. His whole premise is as faulty as it comes because he doesn't use economic statistics that are relevant. Virtually every economist will tell you it takes 2-5 years (average is 3) for a president's economic plan to affect the economy. This can be seen historically very easily. What Carville does is simply take the date a president is put in office for example Obama would be liable for everything that happens in 2009 but is that really fair? Of course not because the budget for 2009 was enacted in 2008 under Bush, Obama's first budget will one that effects 2010. So most economists when judging fiscal policy take the time line and move it three years ahead, if we follow the expert's model and not the political hacks we find that we do modestly better under Republicans than Democrats. One thing is crystal clear though we do worse when one party (doesn't matter which) controls the presidency and the congress. And we actually do the best when there is a D in the white house and the R's control congress.

Once again the facts and competent analysis do not line up with Carville.

Narrative #3 Katrina

This one chaps my hide, I have been a volunteer first responder for over a decade, I have worked nationally and internationally on some big disasters (part of my team is in Haiti as we speak, I turned it down due to family issues), I have worked with FEMA and I was put into Long Beach, Mississippi after Katrina and two days later went to NOLA.

What Carville does in this book is the blatant politicizing of a national disaster; he is using people's lives and hardships for crass political gain. Rather then stepping back and analyzing why the levies weren't funded (Clinton vetoed it but I don't blame him it was part of a larger bill that should have been vetoed), why NOLA was on the list of the least prepared city in America for a natural disaster and why they did not act on that, why no evacuation plans were in place, why massive amounts of people ignored mandatory evacuation notices and the police did nothing to compel them, why the mayor decided to use a shelter that was banned from use.

From an insider let me tell you the real reason why this happening, first and foremost, people refused to evacuate, they ignored a mandatory evacuation order. I don't mean to be rude but if you don't leave there is and the event hits your area there is high probability that you will be injured or lose your life PERIOD. This was not a surprise people, they had three days warning from NOAA and while Carville has a sad story at the back of the book I still have to wonder why that person did not take responsibility and at least gas up his cars to be ready to leave - and yes there was gas in NO, we had plenty of containment problems from gas stations to deal with.

The second problem in NO is that they had NO plan - nada - zilch - zero, their disaster planning was non-existent it was like we had stepped into the stone age. There is a saying that all disasters are local and what that means is that the local people are the ones who know the area best, they should have detailed plans from the simplest to the absolute worst case scenario. That way when help arrives we "told" what to do by the local experts, that is what happened in Mississippi and that is why Mississippi was never spoken about on the news even though they suffered the brunt of the storm. They were organized, efficient, people evacuated, and things were pre-planned, we went in, did a search for victims, cleared areas and allowed people back in. Help was there, rebuilding was starting while we were leaving - it was a picture perfect example of good emergency planning. NO on the other hand was the exact opposite, they expected us to run the disaster for them, they expected the govt to step in and be experts on their problems. It isn't designed that way and to blame Bush for this is asinine. The failure was local PERIOD.

One last comment, I understand that that the story of the Katrina survivor was supposed to portray his hardship but I read it differently. For 13 months this person was housed, given support money, took his kids and extended family to baseball games and amusement parks, flew free on airplanes, traveled back and forth to New Orleans to buy food, received free medical care, and then had the government rebuild his home all FREE What more did he want? No offense but disasters are called disasters for a reason, it sounds to me that while it was inconvenient he actually had it... Read more ›

60 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Carville is no fortune teller, January 15, 2010

By 

Blake Fox (Cranberry Twp, PA, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation (Hardcover)

The title for any future editions should be changed to "How the Democrats will Rule for 2 years" since that is how long it took them to squander total control. No one should take this clown seriously.

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 40 More?! They won't even surivive well past 4! The Cajun Serpent Speaks Stupidly- again!, July 10, 2010

By 

HarryRfromNE (North Shore area of MA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation (Hardcover)

Well, it's July 2010, and the polls show the Democrats & Obama tanking quite well, and heading for November problems.
I DO reckon they have tried to pile drive through their agenda that the majority of voters don't want in a number of examples.
This is one independent/unaffiliated voter who went from voting for Democrats since 1992 with no GOPers getting my vote (except for my state senator) to voting for all GOPers when I can.
I went from a left-leaning moderate to a conservative-leaning moderate and now a moderately conservative independent.
The only bit of respect I have for Carville is when he put his state above his party and Obama and scowled and blasted Obama for his poor response to the worse environmental disaster in our history. Obama, BTW, also rejected almost all of the countries that offered to help - including Holland (who should know how to help in the water issue).
They may or may not lose control of one or both houses of Congress, but with only 20% as liberal or very liberal, 41/42% conservative/very conservative, and 36% (or more)moderate, the liberals and Far Left is out of step with the country.
40 more years? Nope.
Not even past 2010!
Let's get a whole bunch of new men and women in Congress, with the best of the rest, and stop this liberal insanity (The minority of good things does not justify the huge amount of rotten fruit of Dem-controlled Congress & White House).
---------------
DEC 2, 2010 UPDATE: WOW! What a stomping the Dems got in the 2010 elections! Practically the only states that didn't get it were,-= no surprise- California & Massachusetts!
So much for the Ragin' Cajun's predictions!