Veteran Democrat strategist James Carville said his party needs to focus on improving people's lives rather than being obsessed with wokeness.
Carville added that President Joe Biden "doesn’t even know what wokeness is," during an interview on CNN.
One-time a lead strategist for former President Bill Clinton, Carville said his party's unsteady performance in recent elections was due to "noisy" Democrats obsessed with "somebody else's pronouns" rather than how to help the country's citizens.
It was pointed out to Carville that former President Donald Trump gained ground amongst inner city voters in 2020, while Biden gained ground in the suburbs.
"People want candidates to address their lives," Carville said. "Biden did a little worse, but he did better with suburban women. He did better with veterans … We did lose traction with Black voters and Hispanic voters, and I think part of that is we got identified by the defund the police and the language police, and that’s not who Biden is.
"Biden doesn’t even know what wokeness is. You couldn't explain it to him."
According to Carville, movements to "defund the police" were "put to rest" with former New York City police officer and liberal candidate Eric Adams winning the city's Democrat mayoral primary.
"The overwhelming number of Democrats, the most important constituents in our party are Blacks and suburban women, they're not into this [defund the police], all right?" Carville said. "We’re letting a noisy wing of our party define the rest of us. And my point is we can’t do that.
"I think these people are kind of nice people. I think they’re very naive and they're all into language and identity, and that’s all right. They're not storming the Capitol, but they're not winning elections. And I think people ought to see this for what it is."
Carville, whose jobs over the years focused on spinning discussions to Democrats’ advantage, said two-thirds of Republicans are "loony."
"Look, this whole noisy identity left is 15% of the Democratic Party," Carville said. "Two-thirds of [the Republican] party are these loony — agree with these loony insurrectionists.
"We pay such a terrible political price for such a slightly more than fringe element of our party, where they don’t pay near the price for just totally goofy, not even on this planet part of their party. So we just have to be more effective and more determined in our communications."
Carville was asked how his party could "own" crime with critics pointing to such issues as bail reform that helps keep criminals on the streets. Homicides and violent crimes currently are surging in cities run by Democrat mayors.
"People are way more interested in their lives and how to improve them than they are in somebody else’s pronouns," Carville said. "I agree that it’s a problem, but it shouldn’t be as big a problem as it is because they’re nowhere near as big in the Democratic Party as the fringes are in the Republican Party, and that’s something that we've got to drive home."