James Carville sounds the alarm

Earlier this week we brought you the story of how veteran Democratic strategist James Carville appeared on MSNBC and emphatically spelled out what he thinks the Democrats are currently getting wrong. Many of his points seemed spot-on, particularly the part about how the good guys can’t actually make anything better unless they win first. Now Carville is taking things further.

James Carville just did a new interview with Vox, and it’s a sight to see. He starts off by saying this: “We just had an election in 2018. We did great. We talked about everything we needed to talk about, and we won. And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds.” From there, he sounds the alarm even more loudly.

As a longtime campaign strategist, James Carville’s job has always been to figure out how to win. So it matters when he points out that Bernie Sanders, thanks to his enthusiastic but comparatively narrow appeal, has a far worse chance of beating Donald Trump than any other nominee. Carville also correctly points out that even if Bernie did eke out a win against Trump, it wouldn’t lift up the party across the board, and there would be no chance of taking the Senate. Recently, various longtime Republican strategists – all of whom want Trump to lose – have explained that Bernie would struggle badly as the nominee. Carville also points out that Pete Buttigieg’s strong performance in Iowa will only matter if he can find a way to appeal to black voters in the more diverse upcoming primary states.

But Carville has a broader point. He’s correct in that liberal political activism can’t merely consist of “a bunch of 25-year-olds shouting everyone down on Twitter.” No one ever won an election by winning a Twitter fight. Supporters of a given candidate have never gained votes for their candidate by sitting around trying to convince themselves and each other how great their candidate is. Winning means getting out there and fighting. You can read Carville’s full interview here.