I got an email from James Carville the other day! "Dear Dave, Would y'all like an autographed copy of my latest book? The one that tells how Republicans will be up to their necks in electoral ugly for at least the next generation? Of course you would. It's heartwarming stuff."

James goes on:

I am helping the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee get the word out about their text updates-and a fun contest. Here's how to enter. It's as easy as a Sarah Palin wink:

1. Click here or text BOOK (that's for my latest masterpiece) to 736283 (that's for SENATE).
2. You'll get great text updates on Senate races from the DSCC.
3. You'll be automatically entered to win the contest. We'll choose five people at random. The prize? An autographed copy of my latest book, 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.

Now, as smart as I think James Carville is, as much I enjoy watching him bicker with his wife on the TV shows, as much as I support the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's efforts to get the word out with help of modern technology, I was a little insulted. This book came out in May!

And, well, Nielsen Bookscan reports it has sold some 7,000 copies since then. [N.B. BookScan does not count Wal-Mart/Sam's Club or BJ's sales-but does now count airport kiosks, which are, let's be honest, prime Carville selling territory.]

Amazon's knocked the price down to $16.32 from the original $24. What kind of fire-sale item is he trying to unload on me?

Worse than that, as we said this spring, I'm not so sure it was a good idea for my close, personal friend James Carville to write this book in the first place. Was it not a short five or six years ago that people were talking about a "permanent Republican majority"?

Speaking of that long game, remember "The Controller," Nicholas Lemann's terrifying profile of Karl Rove in The New Yorker? Ahem.

In our last interview, I tried out on Rove a scenario I called "the death of the Democratic Party." The Party has three key funding sources: trial lawyers, Jews, and labor unions. One could systematically disable all three, by passing tort-reform legislation that would cut off the trial lawyers' incomes, by tilting pro-Israel in Middle East policy and thus changing the loyalties of big Jewish contributors, and by trying to shrink the part of the labor force which belongs to the newer, and more Democratic, public-employee unions.

MR. RUSSERT: You have said that you-your ultimate goal is a permanent Republican majority. What does that mean?

MR. ROVE: Well, first of all, there are no permanent majorities in American politics. They last for about 20 or 30 or 40 or, in the case of the Roosevelt coalition, 50 or 60 years and then they disappear. But would I like to see the Republican Party be the dominant party for whatever time history gives it the chance to be? You bet.

So I'll take a pass on that autographed copy, thanks.