If the Democrats want to keep on waving the bloody shirt of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion up until the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, they can do just that. And, according to Democratic strategist James Carville, they’re going to lose — since Americans “want an election about their lives.”
In an appearance Thursday on CNN, Carville — best known for being the lead strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign — said Democrats needed to focus on figuring out how they’d “improve American lives and win elections” and “fighting the crime rate,” not House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee or former President Donald Trump.
Despite this, the Jan. 6 committee is still looked to as a savior by many on the Democratic side of the aisle — especially since the only two Republicans involved in the kangaroo commission are anti-Trump Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. The Western Journal has been chronicling just how rigged the whole thing is, and we’ll keep on doing so until it produces its doubtlessly fact-challenged report. You can help us bring America the truth by subscribing.
During the CNN appearance, host John Berman asked Carville whether he thought the committee’s findings would play any role in the Democrats’ success this November.
“Look, you got to wait and see when the committee comes out. I suspect their findings are going to be intriguing and devastating,” he responded.
“But people don’t want to know about it. People want an election about their lives. They don’t want an election about a former president. They don’t want an election about any of this. And if you’ve shown substantial policies that improve people’s lives and you’ve run on that like we did in 2018, you will be successful.”
He added that he didn’t know what would happen to Donald Trump with regards to either the Jan. 6 committee or two district attorney investigations against him. (One is in New York against the Trump Organization, the other in Georgia in regards to election interference.) Instead of betting on that, though, Carville said Democrats should go back to talking about the issues.
“What you can do is do the best you can to talk about how you’re improving American lives and win elections,” he continued.
“You know, Franklin Roosevelt said he went from Dr. New Deal to Dr. Win-the-War. Well, I want to be Dr. Win-the-Election, and that’s got to be our entire focus between now and November.”
Berman, slow on the uptake: “And does that mean, you know, not necessarily pinning it all on Trump?”
“People have an opinion on Trump, and that opinion is going to change over a period of time when events unfold over the year,” Carville said.
“You have a set amount of time that you can talk to a voter, and the voter wants to hear what you’re doing about their families’ lives and their community and their city. All right, I’m sitting in New Orleans right now, I’m worried about a spike in the crime rate. Donald Trump is not first and foremost on my mind.”
Carville is always a breath of fresh air and a rare Democrat political operative one has to admit some kind of grudging respect for, if just because he’s so nakedly who he is: fast-talking, bombastic and a cheerful electoral opportunist until the end.
That said, one wonders what Democratic Party he thinks he’s supporting.
In November, Carville blamed “stupid wokeness” for Democrats getting swept in Virginia’s state-level elections and almost losing the safer-than-safe New Jersey gubernatorial race.
Democrat strategist James Carville blasts the “stupid wokeness” of Democrats for election losses in Virginia and across the country. pic.twitter.com/Jd29gjbsjj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 4, 2021
In January, he told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Democrats “whine too much.”
“Just quit being a whiny party. And get out there and, and fight, and tell people what you did,” Carville said.
The “stupid wokeness” is what they’re doing, however, and the whininess is the point: All grievance politics comes down to whininess. The public face and policies of the Democratic Party have lurched far to the left, particularly on crime.
Since the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the riots it precipitated, the Democrats have become the party of “defund the police” rhetoric. When crime spiked in major cities, it was the pandemic, they said. When it continued to spike after the worst of the pandemic was over, it must be guns.
Smash-and-grab robberies are commonplace in major cities, particularly in places where thefts under a certain amount get charged only as misdemeanors — and thus oft go unreported. Woke DAs such as Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and Alvin Bragg in New York are making life miserable for residents, and those who can flee often do. Criminals are treated as victims.
Democrats don’t want to hear about anything Carville has to say, if just because it makes too much sense.
Most people don’t care about Donald Trump and Jan. 6, no. They care about crime, their families, their communities. They care about inflation and government spending.
If James Carville thinks the White House or Democrats in either house of Congress are concerned about those things, he’s sorely mistaken about what his side of the aisle has become.