Open convention fever is sweeping the elite pundit class. They think it would be fun, fair, and lead to a Trump defeat. I’m not linking to all the idiotic pieces espousing this delusional fantasy, so I’m name checking one because it involves a once prominent Democrat, James Carville, and the media organization that ordered the hit on President Biden, the New York Times.

Carville is a man who has spent the last 32 years resting on his laurels. His sole claim to fame is steering the Clinton campaign to victory in 1992, but we’re supposed to treat him like an oracle. I don’t give a shit that he’s from the Gret Stet of Louisiana, graduated from LSU, and lives in New Orleans. He’s wrong about an open convention and Charlie Pierce is right:

The Brokered Convention is a glorious fantasy for people who cover politics and know absolutely nothing about political history. The 1924 Democratic convention in New York, to name just one example that’s been bandied about recently, was a four-star political calamity. It took the party 103 ballots to nominate a faceless lawyer named John W. Davis, largely because William McAdoo, a prohibitionist backed by the revived Ku Klux Klan, and New York governor Al Smith, the Catholic and a “wet,” couldn’t get out of each other’s way. Thus did Calvin Coolidge win his own full term as president. Imagine all that with social media and television. On second thought, don’t.”

That open convention produced a candidate who only received 28.8% of the vote, the lowest total by any Democratic nominee since women got the vote via the 19th Amendment.

John W. Davis had one other claim to fame: He argued the case for the pro-segregation litigants in Brown v. Board Of Education. The only good that came of that is that the great Burt Lancaster played Davis in the teevee mini-series, Separate But Equal:

That concludes this weekday edition of Separated At Birth: Casting Edition.

As to James Carville: He can go fuck himself. That goes for media hit man, A.G. Sulzberger as well.

The last word goes to Talking Heads: