I’ve always been a big fan of James Carville, the political strategist who turned 80 last month. I love his Louisiana accent, his curmudgeonly behavior and pull-no-punches discourse, and his inevitable appearance on television wearing a Louisana State University shirt, the place he went to college (he was also in the Marines).
You may remember Carville in the 1993 movie “The War Room” as a main strategist, along with George Stephanopoulos, of Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. That film was great, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary (it didn’t win). Here’s Carville giving his minions a peptalk the day before Clinton’s election. He tears up a little as he gives his message:
But we forget that Carville was also the advisor to several losing Presidential campaigns of Democrats, including John Kerry in 2004, Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in 2020.
Carville wasn’t involved directly in Kamala Harris’s campaign, though he contributed to the effort, but right up to the end he thought that Harris would win, and said so loudly and confidently. Here he makes his prediction only five days before the election. (I still love his straightforward style of speaking.) Carville disappears in the middle of the video, but returns at about 5:50 to reaffirm his optimism, promising that the women of America will take Harris over the top.
Yes, Carville’s confident predictions were wrong.
Below you see his postmortem with Amanpour on CNN after the election, acting somewhat sheepish (“winning is everything,” he says) and branding the Democrats as “losers” and now an “opposition party”. His analysis: Harris didn’t sufficiently distinguish herself from Biden, a failure that proved “decisive.” He also blames the lack of an open primary process and the failure of Harris to layout new policies. Finally, he says at the end that the Democrats have been tarred for a long time by the party’s wokeness, and though Harris pivoted a bit towards the center, her party was still tarred with the “stench” of wokeness. As he says, “It’s gonna take more than one cycle to get this stench off of the Democratic Party, and it’s a STENCH of the highest order, let me tell you.” (He throws in that the Party could have given a much stronger economic message.)
But he knew this stuff already when he appeared in the video above! He was simply wrong, and this somewhat detracts from his ability to read politics. Yes, a lot of people were wrong, as the election was close, but somehow I’ve always put my faith in Carville.
But, at eighty, Carville still vows to fight on as a member of the disloyal opposition. He’s already thinking about the 2026 midterms, and about what the Democratic Party has to do to win some Senate and House seats. Ceiling Cat bless this Bayou Curmudgeon!
I don’t view his comments five days before an election as being necessarily what he thinks will happen — he thinks his job, at that point, is to project an image of confidence and to support the candidate. Truth time is for afterwards.
Absolutely agree.
Right. I’ve admired him since my early days as a foreign exchange student wrapped in the Clinton years.
I still listen to him quite often. Seems to me he’s been beating the woke is a bad idea and will screw us – for a long time now.
I can’t account for his prediction FOR Kamala other than rally the troops.
Still like him.
D.A.
NYC
If James Carville knew the Democrats were headed for a crash but didn’t point out their weaknesses beforehand, what good is he as a strategist? No, the truth time is when it’s needed most: Before the election. Kamala Harris was not a substantive candidate for president. The fact that she often struggled to convey how she envisioned her presidency showed she was not prepared. And all the woke crap has been hurting the Democrats for years, and it finally caught up with them this election. Strategists need to confront candidates with the uncomfortable truth before the election so that positive changes can be made in time.
Earlier on, certainly — but five days before the election, it’s too late for him, or anyone else, to do anything constructively in public but cheerlead.
As Peter helpfully pointed out to us here a few days ago, the stench has been rising since at least 2010. Developing that aroma has been a long-term project.
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-of-bad-election-narratives
Seems like it will take more than just a pivot to the economy (and not talking about “trans”, defund the police, etc.) for things to get better. Same story for the Liberal Party of Canada (“Your Natural Governing Party” TM).
Good analysis.
And Carville knows that the woke stuff has been creeping up on the Dems for a while:
Interview with James Carville. Jan 27, 2022
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22893113/james-carville-joe-manchin-biden-democratic-party
This was excellent, Mike, thank you. Top notch analysis from MAGharbi again.
D.A.
NYC
Perhaps it’s the case that Carville, significantly confident about the substance of his post-mortem prior to the election, didn’t want to take the wind out of Democratic sails. Or else not submit to pre-election interviews about the matter, and then his not doing so being taken as a less than optimistic view about the results.
I love James Carville and am proud of him, but this take seems wildly off and even dangerous to me, and I’m annoyed that it is repeated so often. It’s up there with the myth that the democrats have “abandoned” the working class. There might be a widespread perception of “wokeness” and of “abandonment,” but there is also a huge amount of misinformation out there, some of it thanks to Elon Musk, who Bill Maher was embarrassingly cozy and even obsequious with when he had him on his show. I think the biggest mistake that Democrats made was not making it crystal clear that they are the party of working people and that republicans policies will do nothing but hurt working people. It also would be nice to see some work from democrats in red states. I live in New Orleans, and the Louisiana Democratic Party is a disorganized mess. The best information and the best source of inspiration this cycle has been from my partner’s excellent union, which endorsed Harris. It’s good to analyze what went wrong, but only if the analysis makes sense and steers us in the right direction. The Republicans will always be able to find some new scapegoat and turn some small social issue into a culture war. Remember the myth of the welfare queen? If we insist on sticking together, pointing out their lies, and putting a clear and easy to understand message on media that people besides just hardcore democrats use, I think we’ll do much, much better.
Dangerous? He is a talking head on TV.
I think dangerous is the right word, but maybe I didn’t explain why very well. I keep hearing, for example, “Democrats have abandoned the working class,” and, “wokeness is why the democrats keep losing,” and this makes it sound as if all of the blame is on Democrats, for one thing, and, for another thing, as if both complaints are true and are facts, and I think that’s dangerously wrong. It lets Republicans off the hook for all of the lies and misinformation, and it clouds our judgment going forward.
You could make an argument that this time around the Republican lies and disinformation were preferred slightly more than the Democrat lies and disinformation.
It’s a terrible way to judge the worthiness of a Party, and candidate, though.
I’m sure there’s lots of variation among labour unions. But in my country the largest unions represent federal or provincial public service employees. ~All of those unions are led by people like this guy whose public pronouncements for the last year have focused on the “genocide in Gaza”.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cupe-ontario-president-fred-hahn-social-media-jewish-1.7298828
His own national union leadership disavowed him, and he seems to mainly represent specific progressive political constituencies rather than his own working-class union members (whose politics span the range from progressive to conservative, and include lots of Jews). For those unions at least it’s hopeless to expect immediate refocusing on wages, benefits, and pensions that the union members really care about, or a pivot away from progressive issues like Hamas and “trans”, because the leadership are not working-class people. They are symbolic capitalists (musaalgharbi.substack.com).
What a creep.
Again, Mike, yes.
I’ve turned my opinions on unions generally since covid.
I’m a huge capitalist, made what dough I have on Wall St., but socially liberal.
I used to think unions were helpful to society and workers generally (though I’ve never been a member of one).
Canada and covid and their love of terrorists in Canada and here turned me on this.
D.A.
NYC
I am a union member of 20+ years and a local union leader and from my perch I think you are correct Mike. My state level union bureaucracy has become ideologically captured (I started noticing something strange in 2015) and seems hell-bent on continuing on that path. Unfortunately, most rank-and-file members are simply quiet about the nonsense because of the venom that will be hurled their way of they express an opinion which does not totally conform and/or promote Critical Social Justice Ideology – be it non-binary sex differences in humans, Oppressor v oppressed, race essentialism, etc. My states Democrat party (which I supported until recently) is propped up by the union and therefore parrots those ideologies.
Sorry to hear that Raymond. Sucks.
In many ways the Democrats did abandon the working class to favor the elite class.
An example is student loan forgiveness, which disproportionately advantaged the professional class.
Republican policies such as limiting immigration to legal entrants only, and more strongly policing crime and prosecuting criminals are also things that support the working class. Trump’s proposal to not tax tips went over big with the working class, which is why the Harris campaign handlers also adopted it.
Additionally, lunch-bucket Bob doesn’t want his daughter losing a spot on her HS soccer team to a boy, and brown-bag Sally doesn’t want to be forced to share a locker room at the yoga studio with some dude who just changed his name from Charles to Charli. D support for these things and shutting down of voices objecting to them are big turnoffs to people not in the elite highly-educated/low-common-sense circles. Many Republicans said that men cannot become pregnant – what lie or misinformation is contained in that statement that you would have the Democrats combat?
Of course, other D policies do support working class folks, especially if they’re in a union. I’m not arguing that. I’m just saying that there are some things that don’t, and that not all R policies “do nothing but hurt working people”.
Biden invited Dylan Mulvaney to the White House. I did not believe this. Then I watched the video… Kamala supported having tax-payers pay for gender surgery for prisoners.
“You launch investigations. You make talking points”. No, no, no. Please, no! That’s what the Democrats spent a boatload of time and money doing when Trump was in office before. That old school bullshit turns people off to politics. I didn’t listen to the whole interview because I’ve had my fill of this. Jerry already highlighted the “stench of woke” which, obviously, is a factor. Nobody wants to hear the same whiners whining, though. AOC, for starters. Her “mean girl” attempts to corner Trump’s candidate for Border Czar, Tom Homan, didn’t work, did it? Her shine has shone. People are pissed and tired. The Democrats need to quit the investigations and talking points and get real. If any of them truly give a damn about this country, I beg of them to get off camera and get to work. Show is over. We’ve seen this movie.
James Carville, the Ragin’ Cajun, has been a favorite of mine since I read “Primary Colors”. Even though his 2024 prediction proved to be incorrect, he’s a very astute political analyst. The 2024 election was another close one and the wrecking ball of a cabinet probably being assembled does bode well for the D’s in 2026. The D’s should still do a post-mortem and pivot toward a center that is badly underrepresented by both parties. Hope his party listens to him on those points.
The comment about Carville fighting on a member of the disloyal opposition struck me. The Republicans were “the party of NO” and evil and obstructionist when they opposed Obama, but now the Democrats are the “disloyal opposition” and on the side of angels. I’m not judging; just pointing out that one’s opinions are colored by the party they belong to.
Me, I’m tired of one party just fighting the other one all the time no matter what. OTOH, maybe that’s better for the populace than politicians always doing what they want.
Oh both parties behave loyally to each other whenever it suits them. Democrats joined forces with the most obnoxious Republicans to replace McCarthy with Johnson.
Carville Is whip-smart and incisive, and he’s willing to tell the Democrats unpalatable truths. But in the end, he won’t say a word that could actually hurt them. He’ll lie and say the Democrat is winning even when he’s smart enough to know the Democrat isn’t.