Just vaguely depressed
From James Carville
CNN
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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's a lot easier being on this side of the desk than being in a campaign.
I feel the pain of a lot of my friends out there. It's obviously a very difficult election cycle for Democrats, and there are a lot of people out there in a great deal of pain. I know what it is like to work your heart out in a campaign for a long period of time -- and to have a night like this. So, I feel a lot of empathy for a lot of people.
I realized that it was moving in this direction when North Carolina fell fast and New Hampshire fell -- and it looked like we weren't doing well in the South and weren't doing well in the North.
By the time the information was coming to us on the Crossfire set, I'd already talked to some people in New Hampshire. I was getting a lot of calls on the cell phone today from friends out there, and I had known that New Hampshire was in trouble, so I was not surprised when Rep. John Sununu defeated Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for the Senate seate there. The calls started coming in through the day.
When the combination of New Hampshire and North Carolina came in, that was when it threw off every scenario I had in which I thought Democrats would win. I'd been counting on New Hampshire working for the Democrats. There's a trend out there, and it's for the Republicans, and it's tough for Democrats to buck a trend.
But there's a ton difference between being an analyst and being in a campaign. The toughest race I lost was way back in Virginia in '82 where I had a race that I thought I was going to win. It was a guy named Dick Davis who was running for the United States Senate.
It's like I said, I feel bad for my party, I feel bad for my friends, but if I'd been running one of these campaigns, if I'd invested a year of my life in running one of these campaigns, I'd be near suicidal right now. Instead, I'm just vaguely depressed.
