It’s the wokeness, stupid! James Carville who helped engineer Bill Clinton’s 1992 win warns Democrats to drop ‘faculty lounge’ hectoring and start speaking like normal people
- Political strategist James Carville warns Democrats that ‘wokeness is a problem’ that could cost the party elections in the coming years in a VOX.com interview
- He said it’s part of a ‘messaging problem’ that the Democrats have
- There’s nothing wrong with phrases like ‘Latinx’ or ‘communities of color’ but ‘This “too cool for school” sh*t doesn’t work, and we have to stop it’
- He said President Joe Biden’s administration should crack down on party leaders who use ‘jargon’ phrases, specifically mentioning abolishing the police
- ‘Almost no one wants to f*****g wants to do that,’ Carville said
The political strategist made famous for his proclamation during Bill Clinton‘s winning 1992 presidential campaign – It’s the economy, stupid! – has a new warning for Democrats: It’s the wokeness, stupid!
James Carville says the ultra-liberal ‘faculty lounge’ politics of much of the Democratic party is ignoring the meat-and-potatoes main line of the U.S.
‘Wokeness is a problem’ that could cost Democrats in future elections, Carville told VOX.com.
Even though Democrats re-took the presidency and Senate, they did so only by very narrow margins – and they beat a ‘world-historical buffoon,’ he said of Donald Trump. They also lost congressional seats and failed to pick up state legislatures.
‘The reason is simple: They’ve got a messaging problem, he said.
Carville said there’s too much ‘faculty lounge’ politics among the Democratic party – for example using phrases like ‘Latinx’ for Latino or ‘communities of color’ for black people.
‘You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses,’ he told VOX.com.
While there’s nothing wrong with phrases like that, he said, ‘This ‘too cool for school’ sh*t doesn’t work, and we have to stop it.’
For that to happen, Carville said Democrats need to incorporate more rural white voters, which they won’t do unless they start talking like ‘ordinary people’ and stop tweeting about abolishing the police because ‘almost no one wants to f*****g wants to do that.’
James Carville, who’s famous for the line ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ during Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, told VOX.com that ‘Wokeness is a problem’ for the Democratic party. He’s pictured here speaking to MSNBC in Feb. 2020
Carville said Democrats need to incorporate more rural white voters, which they won’t do unless they start talking like ‘ordinary people’ and stop tweeting that about abolishing the police because ‘almost no one wants to f*****g wants to do that’
Carville said Democrat party has a ‘messaging problem’ because they use ‘faculty lounge’ language, like ‘Latinx’ or ‘communities of color,’ instead of talking like the common voter. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a leader in the Democratic party and hails from San Francisco
While he admitted it’s virtually impossible for the to get a majority of the rural, white vote, Carville said they just have to lose by less.
‘The difference between getting beat 80 to 20 and 72 to 28 is all the difference in the world,’ he said.
And the strategy for Democrats, he said, is for President Joe Biden’s administration to crack down on party leaders using ‘jargon’ phrases.
That doesn’t mean the party can’t talk about race, he said.
‘We should talk about racial injustice. What I’m saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people – including most black people, by the way – because it signals that you’re trying to talk around them.’
Democrats also need to constantly remind the country of the insurrection at the US Capitol he said was precipitated by Trump – and be reminded of Democrats winning both Senate seats in Georgia.
Rioters inside the Senate Chamber on January 6, minutes after it was cleared of lawmakers. Carville says Democrats need to relentlessly tie the insurrection to Republicans
Democratic leaders ‘have to make the Republicans own that insurrection every day. They have to pound it … the Democrats should spend every day tying all of it to the Republican Party,’ Carville said in the VOX.com interview.
‘Hell, just imagine if it was a bunch of nonwhite people who stormed the Capitol. Imagine how Republicans would exploit that and make every news cycle about how the Dems are responsible for it,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think Republicans would do to us in that scenario, that’s exactly what the hell we need to do them.’