IT'S A DAY ENDING IN "-DAY," SO JAMES CARVILLE IS ATTACKING DEMOCRATS AGAIN

Oh, look -- it's James Carville bashing Democrats again, in a Fox News op-ed:

I'll admit it: Democrats are on the defensive when it comes to crime. President Donald Trump’s takeovers of Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles aren't making America any safer, but they're effective stunts — designed to put Democrats on the back foot and distract from his administration driving our country to economic ruin.

Republican law and order messaging is nothing new — Google "Richard Nixon." But in the wake of the whole "defund the police" debacle, Democrats are still working to find clear, consistent answers to it that voters trust. Democrats’ perceived positions on law-and-order issues are some of the clear disconnects we have with working-class voters of all races.

No, James -- D.C.-based Democrats are on the defensive. In the states, governors such as J.B. Pritzker and Wes Moore are going on offense, as are mayors in cities such as Chicago and Boston.

And Trump's stunts aren't politically effective, as Greg Sargent notes in a New Republic podcast:

... we should point out that actual polling on this suggests very strongly that this is not an issue that Democrats need to shy away from. Quinnipiac found recently that American voters oppose sending troops into D.C. by 56 percent to 41 percent, a 15-point margin.

... Pew Research, which is not an obscure firm, recently found that 56 percent are not confident in Trump’s ability to effectively handle law enforcement and criminal justice issues—only 44 percent are confident. Meanwhile, G. Elliott Morris, the data guy, did polling as well on this, found Trump underwater on crime at 45 to 48. The Pew poll is a lot more striking, but both are underwater.

Sargent says this in a conversation with Jamison Foser, who wrote about all this a few days ago in a piece titled "Trump’s Military Occupation of American Cities Is Unpopular. The Media Is Trying to Manufacture Consent for It."

But the problem isn't just the media. It's D.C.-oriented Democrats like Carville who seem to want the party to be perceived as on the wrong side of this issue.

In his Fox op-ed, Carville goes on to praise former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, who's running a pro-police campaign:

Instead of following the worst instincts of her party, Spanberger has repeatedly stuck to her guns and bucked the party orthodoxy. She talks about what it means to wear the badge, and what it meant to see her dad put one on every day when he went to work.

She crossed the aisle to vote for additional funding for police departments. She also led the charge to let retired officers receive the full Social Security benefits they paid into during their careers. That law even earned her recent praise from the Fraternal Order of Police, the same police union that endorsed Trump during each of his three runs for president.

These aren’t just political winners, they’re the kind of decisions that Americans actually agree with — even if they leave some liberals grumbling.

... to win elections, Democrats need to do more than just govern effectively — we need to aggressively communicate the steps we’re taking to actually make American communities safer. That means speaking in plain, direct language that people really use, not sounding like we’re auditioning for NPR pledge week.

Carville implies that Spanberger engaged in brave acts of party-defying bipartisanship, but in the House, 191 Democrats voted for the Social Security Fairness Act and only 4 voted no.

Carville thinks he's pointing his party in a better direction, but his endless repetition of liberal stereotypes sends a different message: A handful of Democrats are good, but the rest of the party is a bunch of woke crackpots. Bafflingly, he think this is good messaging for the party as a whole.

Carville also suggests that Spanberger's approach is excellent politics. But her lead in the Real Clear Polling average is only 6.8. By contrast, Zohran Mamdani, who actually did advocate defunding the police years ago (though he no longer does), leads the New York mayor's race by 15 points, according to RCP.

Obviously, Virginia isn't New York City. But that's the point: different candidates with different messages can succeed in different parts of the country. Carville, as an advocate for his party, should be positive, or at least not negative, about all of them. But he'd rather denigrate his party and say that the candidates he likes are the exception rather than the rule. How does that help the party?