James Carville is beloved in Austin
This interview can be heard in full at the Honesty Podcast.
What follows are a few snippets from James Carville, shared with a most enthusiastic audience in Austin, Texas. He’d been waltzing around downtown Austin, recognizable in his New Orleans Mardi Gras color scheme of gold, purple, and green–and the downtown crowd was buzzing.
Bari Weiss introduced Carville by quoting his former business partner, Paul Begala. “James lives in a border town between genius and madness. Now that he’s rich and famous, he’s eccentric. I knew him when he was just crazy.” If Carville is crazy, he’s crazy like a fox.
“Correctness” in politics and scholarship is a losing game
Carville has deep nostalgia for his student years — “The best four years of my life was spent as a sophomore!” — but he is no longer a professor. The ex-professor decided to bow out after a student complained about a joke he made in class about the sound of a champagne cork popping: “the sigh of a satisfied woman.” In hindsight, Carville said he’d call it “a mild burp!”
Why won’t Democrats have a 2024 presidential primary? James Carville understands but he sighs. “People just like Biden. Democrats don’t wanna be mean – but if you want a friend, buy a dog!”
By any measure of success in office, President Joe Biden should be reelected…but Carville gets a sense that people are looking for something different.
Carville says the country is “bustin’ at the seams” for a new generation of Democrats to get in there and lead. And he says that right now the talent in the Democratic party is as high as he’s seen in any party.
If Biden and Trump run against each other, Carville predicts it will be “the rematch from hell.” The polls say people don’t want either one of them to win, but it looks like no one is going to step up to offer a viable alternative. Except for spoilers. He’s worried that No Labels or the Green Party could pull moderates or independents away from Biden.
“If Trump were reelected, it would be the end of the country.”
If the GOP got control, Carville predicts they would remove the independent judiciary and we could lose it all: the rule of law, and democracy.
What’s with the Dems whining about Kamala Harris?
Some Dems are noodling around about whether it would change the game to move the chess pieces, move Kamala into another role and pick another VP for 2024.
Carville is disgusted by this kind of talk. “This is not a VP problem.” Biden is at 41 percent in the polls. Biden’s problem has nothing to do with Kamala Harris.
“I went through this with Hillary. Every time a woman speaks, she is accused of shrieking. Any election with a female versus male up for an office, there will always be the gender issue.”
As for Kamala Harris’ ambitions, Carville summed it up: “She wanted to run for the worst possible way —and she succeeded! She’s not fulfilled her potential.”
If the Democrats really want change, he suggests that Kamala Harris and other Democrats step up and primary Biden for 2024.
What are the chances that we see any change in the lineup for 2024?
“History goes decades with nothing happening. Then weeks occur where decades happen.” Carville laughs that he’s quoting the Russian Marxist revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, to make his point about where America is at right now, but it’s a hopeful quote…or a terrifying one, depending on what happens next.
Trump, MAGA, and justice
The indictments against Trump don’t matter, politically – they do nothing to change MAGA’s view of him. “Trump said he could shoot someone, and it wouldn’t matter. Well, a judge found Trump guilty of raping someone on 5th Avenue. And that doesn’t matter with his base.”
“But MAGA was there before Trump; the ideas were there. Trump just showed up came in and stoked the MAGA crowd.” Carville looks up at heaven and expostulates: “The entire GOP bunch! Boebert!!…Ken Paxton!!!”
The Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump gets Carville’s goat. He says that the defense attorneys have their work cut out for them.
“What’s the defense? If I leave here and I take this chair and I say it’s mine because I sat in it…and [the Omni] tries to get it back and I say, It’s mine??? And why do people say, ‘Well, Trump’s a packrat.’ If you steal jewelry, you can’t tell the police you are a packrat!”
Ron DeSantis is cursed
Asked about Ron DeSantis’ mistakes. Well, he kicked Tucker Carson’s dog! There’s something wrong with that boy…I don’t think he was potty trained!” Carlson smiles broadly and muses on DeSantis’ coming demise, courtesy of influential political consultant Susie Wiles.
DeSantis turned on Wiles after she helped get him elected governor. And “Susie went to Mar-a-Lardo and got with Trump. Susie knows every bad thing about DeSantis and she’s on every journalist’s speed dial. Susie leaked the pudding story and she’s sticking pins in a DeSantis voodoo doll.” Carville goes into a laughing fit at this image, and we all laugh along with him. It’s a very New Orleans image.
“Enemies are a fact,” he warns. “Be careful of who you make into your enemy.” For more on the Susie Wiles versus DeSantis drama, here’s the dirt dished up by the New York Times.
Books that are not banned
Carville gives us a couple of book assignments. For insights into the Democratic party, he recommends “Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes” by John B. Judis (@JohnBJudis) and Ruy Teixeira.
If you are still trying to figure out what happened to Uncle Henry who’s all Foxed up and won’t stop talking about Trump and QAnon, pick up “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
Dems will keep winning — and the GOP is nuts
To liberals who are hiding under their beds and crying over Trump and a 2024 apocalypse, Carville points out the obvious: Democrats have not lost an election since last June. As for Trump, he polled low while he in office and he’s polling low right now.
Democrats jostle and quibble over political details because the party is a diverse coalition. Some of the Democrats may be pretty far to the left but the entire party gets labeled kooks by the GOP.
Carville says the GOP looks more unified because MAGA is a cult (with identical talking points).
“Why do we pay such a price for our eccentric politicians, but the GOP doesn’t pay for their members… who are nuts! Why, some of the GOP believe the earth is 5,000 years old! And they are burning books! And they fired a teacher for reading Anne Frank!” He’s yelling. He’s right.
The cult of identity and “wokeness”
Carville says that the left is lost in an ideological maze. He sounds tired and disgusted. “No one wants to defund the cops!”
“Some overeducated white people took the word “woke” and tried to turn it into something else. And as a result, the Dems lost 20 house seats.”
The term “woke” was used in the song “The Scottsboro Boys” recorded by Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly”. The song, which tells about nine African American young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama, warns Blacks to stay aware of the police when traveling in the American South. Lead Belly admonished listeners to, “Best stay woke!”
Or, as Carville put it, “We need to be situationally aware.”
Bios…
James Carville
Political strategist and author. James Carville is America’s best-known political consultant. Carville’s most prominent victory, Bill Clinton’s successful run for the presidency in 1992, cemented his status as a major political player. In recent years, Carville has focused his strategic thinking on international campaigns reaching more than 23 countries around the globe. James Carville can be heard every week with journalist Al Hunt on the Politics War Room Podcast.
Bari Weiss
Founder and Editor, The Free Press. Bari Weiss is the host of the “Honestly” podcast. She was previously a writer and editor at The New York Times and an editor at The Wall Street Journal and Tablet Magazine. She is the winner of the LA Press Club’s 2021 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism, the Reason Foundation’s 2018 Bastiat Prize, and the 2019 National Jewish Book Award.
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