Screenshot via Politicon
Democratic strategist James Carville did not hold back when he gave his 2024 election post-mortem and offered some advice for Democrats in 2028.
In a Politicon video, Carville argued Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign made foundational mistakes, like Harris not picking “her own people” and the campaign being too guided by “identity politics.” He argued the message focus should have been raising the minimum wage and raising taxes on individuals making more than $400,000 a year.
“They didn’t want to run on minimum wage because her campaign thought that would be, quote, anti-business, unquote. If somebody had said that to me, I might have punched them in the fucking mouth,” Carville said.
He called out what he referred to as the “‘w’ word.”
“I can’t stand the ‘w’ word. I call it identity politics; you can imagine what I think the ‘w’ word is. It sickens me to even use it because the word is so noble and so glorious in its origin,” he said, referring to “woke.”
Carville accused Daily Show host Jon Stewart and others of downplaying the focus on “identity politics” after the fact.
He said:
“The discussion now, I saw Bill Maher, I saw Jon Stewart, I saw different people [say], did it hurt us? Of course it hurt us. And so Jon Stewart says, ‘well, it couldn’t have hurt us because no Democrat ran on it.’ Of course they didn’t run on it because even to the most clueless progressive that you can imagine, by that time — so in order to escape any responsibility for what happened, they said, ‘well, that stuff was never used in 2024.’ Well, you’re fucking wrong! It was used! See in politics — in comedy, if you tell a bad joke, who gives a shit? You tell a better joke and you throw the bad joke away. In politics, if you have a bad policy, particularly one as a bad and stupid as this was, you may throw it away, but the other side gets to play. Understand that! This is a two-sided thing.”
Carville’s sharpest criticism was for younger “progressive” Democrats steering the party’s ship. The strategist pointed to reported objections within Harris’s own campaign to her potentially appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast before the election as part of the problem holding Democrats back.
He said:
“The vice president was thinking about going on Joe Rogan’s show and a lot of the younger, progressive staffers pitched a hissy fit. Supposedly the campaign said that wasn’t the determining factor, but they did. When you put a campaign together and you hire young people to do work, let me tell you exactly what you tell these people, what I would tell them: Not only am I not interested in your fucking opinion, I’m not even going to call you by your name. You’re 23 years old, I don’t really give a shit what you think.”
He continued by calling it a “huge fucking error” that Democrats have begun thinking their campaigns need to “reflect” progressive values. According to Carville, they do not because successful campaigns are required to be “authoritarian.”
He argued:
“And let me tell you another error, a huge fucking error that was made is when people said, campaigns need to reflect progressive values. No, they don’t! No, they don’t! Campaigns are authoritarian by their nature. If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some little snot-nosed 23 year old saying, I’m going to resign if you do this, not only would I fire that motherfucker on the spot, I would find out who hired him and fire that person on the spot! I’m really not interested in your uninformed, stupid, jackass opinion as to whether to go on Joe Rogan or not.”
Watch above via Politicon.
