Democrats will lose future races if they continue to embrace identity politics, cancel culture and efforts to defund the police, says veteran Democrat strategist James Carville.
''It's the thing I most worry about,'' Carville said in an interview this week with former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Carville was asked whether he was concerned about Democrats giving ''enough oxygen to'' those complex issues that allows Republicans to ''scream about it and yell about it for two years or four years and really have an effect.''
''I don't know of a single person that thinks of themselves as a'person of color,''' Carville said. ''I really don't. I had Ruben Gallego, who's a Democratic congressman from Arizona, and we did much better in Arizona than we did in Texas or Florida, and he said, 'I've never heard anybody use the word Latinx.' And that's just not the way people talk. It's not what they — It's just not the way.
''When people hear that — and it's a little different because when you're in the middle of it, you hear it so much it doesn't stand out. When you're out in the rest of the country — It was like the janitor at Smith College. ... And I got to tell you, I'm a supportive, ardent Democrat, passion and everything, but the English faculty at Amherst has too much power in this party. They really do.
"And they come up with all of these different things and when people see that, they don't like it because it's not what their life is. I think Biden does a — Congratulations, he stays out of that.''
Carville said Biden ''doesn't get involved in all of this and I think that's smart.''
''He just keeps talking about what he talks about and I think it's smart because once you get drawn into it, they're like, they never stop,'' he added. ''Never stop. They never stop. They're always trying to get somebody fired. They're outraged at somebody all the time. And it just wears people down. It's not worth fooling with them. They're nuts.''
Carville, 76, also suggested that the party needs to shake things up with younger lawmakers in top positions – naming former Rep. Katie Hill of California and Reps. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania as young Democrats he liked.
''What happens is the speaker's 80-something, the party is 80-something and there's just a lot of — the committee, chairs, there's a lot of baggage there, and they're going to have to … do something to let this young talent shift up because they'll start losing races,'' Carville said.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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