James Carville thinks the Democratic Party has a wokeness problem – Vox.com

I called James Carville hoping to get his thoughts on President Joe Bidens first 100 days in office.

He obliged then, one question in, brushed aside the exercise to talk instead about why the Democrats might be poised to squander their political advantage against a damaged GOP.

His failure to cooperate may have been for the best since the first 100 days ritual can sometimes lead to dull, dutiful analysis. What Carville offered up instead was a blunt critique of his own party even after a successful 2020 election cycle a sequel of sorts to his fulminations during last years Democratic primaries. The longtime Democratic strategist is mostly pleased with Biden, but its where much of the party seems to be going that has him worried.

Wokeness is a problem, he told me, and we all know it. According to Carville, Democrats are in power for now, but they also only narrowly defeated Donald Trump, a world-historical buffoon, and they lost congressional seats and failed to pick up state legislatures. The reason is simple: Theyve got a messaging problem.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

What do you make of Bidens first 100 days?

Honestly, if were just talking about Biden, its very difficult to find something to complain about. And to me his biggest attribute is that hes not into faculty lounge politics.

Faculty lounge politics?

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. Or they use a phrase like communities of color. I dont know anyone who speaks like that. I dont know anyone who lives in a community of color. I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in ... neighborhoods.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that youre talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense its not.

Is the problem the language or the fact that there are lots of voters who just dont want to hear about race and racial injustice?

We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice. What Im saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language thats unrecognizable to most people including most Black people, by the way because it signals that youre trying to talk around them. This too cool for school shit doesnt work, and we have to stop it.

There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it aint the majority. And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18 percent of the population controls 52 percent of the Senate seats. Thats a fact. Thats not changing. Thats what this whole damn thing is about.

Sounds like you got a problem with wokeness, James.

Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. Its hard to talk to anybody today and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party who doesnt say this. But they dont want to say it out loud.

Why not?

Because theyll get clobbered or canceled. And look, part of the problem is that lots of Democrats will say that we have to listen to everybody and we have to include every perspective, or that we dont have to run a ruthless messaging campaign. Well, you kinda do. It really matters.

I always tell people that weve got to stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Yiddish. We have to speak the way regular people speak, the way voters speak. It aint complicated. Thats how you connect and persuade. And we have to stop allowing ourselves to be defined from the outside.

What does that mean?

Take someone like Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shes obviously very bright. She knows how to draw a headline. In my opinion, some of her political aspirations are impractical and probably not going to happen. But thats probably the worst thing that you can say about her.

Now take someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the new Republican congresswoman from Georgia. Shes absolutely loonier than a tune. We all know it. And yet, for some reason, the Democrats pay a bigger political price for AOC than Republicans pay for Greene. Thats the problem in a nutshell. And its ridiculous because AOC and Greene are not comparable in any way.

I hear versions of this argument about language and perception all the time, James. Its an old problem. Whats the solution?

Thats why Im doing this interview. Lots of smart people are going to read it, and hopefully they can figure out that which I cant. But if youre asking me, I think its because large parts of the country view us as an urban, coastal, arrogant party, and a lot gets passed through that filter. Thats a real thing. I dont give a damn what anyone thinks about it its a real phenomenon, and its damaging to the party brand.

Part of the issue is that Republicans are going to paint the Dems as cop-hating, fetus-destroying Stalinists no matter what they say or do. So, yeah, I agree that Democrats should be smart and not say dumb, alienating things, but Im also not sure how much control they have over how theyre perceived by half the country, especially when that half lives in an alternate media reality.

Right, but we cant say, Republicans are going to call us socialists no matter what, so lets just run as out-and-out socialists. Thats not the smartest thing to do. And maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isnt the smartest thing to do because almost fucking no one wants to do that.

Heres the deal: No matter how you look at the map, the only way Democrats can hold power is to build on their coalition, and that will have to include more rural white voters from across the country. Democrats are never going to win a majority of these voters. Thats the reality. But the difference between getting beat 80 to 20 and 72 to 28 is all the difference in the world.

So they just have to lose by less thats all.

So what do you want the Democrats to do differently besides not having people peddle politically toxic ideas like abolishing the police? How do they change the conversation so that Republicans arent defining them by their least popular expressions?

Youre a strategist, James. I want to know what youd advise them to do. You dont have any complaints about Biden because hes getting stuff done. Hes putting money in peoples pockets. But the Democratic Party is a big coalition and youre always going to have people promoting unpopular ideas, right? Whereas the Republican Party is more homogenous, and that lends itself to a tighter, more controlled message.

Tell me this: How is it we have all this talk about Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and we dont talk about Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker of the House in Congress? If Hastert was a Democrat who we knew had a history of molesting kids and was actually sent to prison in 2016, hed still be on Fox News every fucking night. The Republicans would never shut the hell up about it.

So when Jim Jordan was pulling all these stunts with Anthony Fauci [Fauci was speaking at a congressional hearing about ending coronavirus precautions], why didnt someone jump in and say, Let me tell you something, Jim, if Fauci knew what you knew, if he knew that a doctor was molesting young people, he wouldve gone to the medical board yesterday. So you can go ahead and shut the fuck up. [Ed. note: Jordan denies knowing about the allegations of abuse when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State University.] I love that Congresswoman Maxine Waters told Jordan to shut your mouth, but thats what I really wish a Democrat would say, and I wish theyd keep saying it over and over again.

Can I step back for a second and give you an example of the broader problem?

Sure.

Look at Florida. You now have Democrats saying Florida is a lost cause. Really? In 2018 in Florida, giving felons the right to vote got 64 percent. In 2020, a $15 minimum wage, which we have no chance of passing [federally], got 67 percent. Has anyone in the Democratic Party said maybe theres nothing wrong with the state of Florida? Maybe the problem is the kind of campaigns were running?

If you gave me an environment in which the majority of voters wanted to expand the franchise to felons and raise the minimum wage, I should be able to win that. Its certainly not a political environment Im destined to lose in. But in Miami-Dade, all they talked about was defunding the police and Kamala Harris being the most liberal senator in the US Senate. And if you look all across the Rio Grande Valley, we lost all kinds of solidly blue voters. And the faculty lounge bullshit is a big part of it.

If youre a Democrat, you could look at the state of play and say, Were winning. We won the White House. We won Congress. We have power. It aint perfect, but it aint a disaster either.

We won the White House against a world-historical buffoon. And we came within 42,000 votes of losing. We lost congressional seats. We didnt pick up state legislatures. So lets not have an argument about whether or not were off-key in our messaging. We are. And were off because theres too much jargon and theres too much esoterica and it turns people off.

Not to beat a dead horse, but Democrats and Republicans are dealing with very different constituencies. Democrats have a big tent, they have to win different kinds of voters and that means making different kinds of appeals. Republicans can get away with shit that Democrats cannot.

Yeah, thats a problem. We can only do what we can do. People always say to me, Why dont Democrats just lie like Republicans? Because if they did, our voters wouldnt stand for it. But Im not saying we need to lie like they do. Im saying, why not go after Gaetz and Jordan and link them to Hastert and the Republican Party over and over and over again? We have to take these small opportunities to define ourselves and the other side every damn time. And we dont do it. We just dont do it.

Republicans arent just more comfortable lying, theyre more comfortable with slogans and sound bites, and thats partly why theyre more effective at defining themselves and the Democrats.

Let me give you my favorite example of metropolitan, overeducated arrogance. Take the climate problem. Do you realize that climate is the only major social or political movement that I can think of that refuses to use emotion? Wheres the identifiable song? Wheres the bumper sticker? Wheres the slogan? Wheres the flag? Wheres the logo?

We dont have it because with faculty politics what you do is appeal to reason. You dont need the sloganeering and sound bites. Thats for simple people. All you need are those timetables and temperature charts, and from that, everyone will just get it.

Thats not how the world works; thats not how people work. And Republicans are way more disciplined about taking a thing and branding it. Elites will roll their eyes at that, but Id ask, Hows that working out for you? Most people agree with us on health care and minimum wage and Roe v. Wade and even on the climate.

So why cant we leverage that?

What would you have Biden do to counter some of these messaging problems?

Id have him pick up a phone. Id have someone in the White House pick up the phone. And when someone in the party starts this jargon shit, Id call them and say, Were only a vote away. Our approval rating is 60 percent. We got a chance to pick up seats in 2022, and if you did this, it would be very helpful to us.

Are you sure those calls arent happening already?

Maybe they are, but they need to be more effective. And we need more of them.

Theres a philosophy on the left right now, which says the Democrats should pass everything they possibly can, no matter the costs, and trust that the voters will reward them on the back end.

Where do you land on that?

First of all, the Democratic Party cant be more liberal than Sen. Joe Manchin. Thats the fact. We dont have the votes. But Ill say this, two of the most consequential political events in recent memory happened on the same day in January: the insurrection at the US Capitol and the Democrats winning those two seats in Georgia. Cant overstate that.

But the Democrats cant fuck it up. They have to make the Republicans own that insurrection every day. They have to pound it. They have to call bookers on cable news shows. They have to get people to write op-eds. There will be all kinds of investigations and stories dripping out for god knows how long, and the Democrats should spend every day tying all of it to the Republican Party. They cant sit back and wait for it to happen.

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. Every political debate would be about that. The Republicans would bludgeon the Democrats with it forever.

So whatever you think Republicans would do to us in that scenario, thats exactly what the hell we need to do them.

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James Carville thinks the Democratic Party has a wokeness problem - Vox.com