When he’s right, he’s right. Longtime Democratic strategist and fundraiser James “Ragin’ Cajun” Carville called out Democrats for embracing “stupid wokeness” after devastating election losses around the country. Talking down to voters, defunding the police, calling parents liars, all of this, Carville says, amounted to sweeping losses for Democrats who embraced a far-left “woke” agenda. If Democrats don’t abandon this move to outright social fascism, Carville says to expect more losses moving forward and the party being totally abandoned by suburban voters across the board.
Speaking with NPR’s Judy Woodruff, Carville explained his thoughts and why Democrats need “work detox centers” if they want to win in the future:
As Carville mentions, it wasn’t just in Virginia, where Republicans swept statewide after Biden won there by 10 points last year, Democrats lost around the country from Seattle to Buffalo, and everywhere in between.
The best description, that Democrats “pulled the pin and watched it explode,” is apt, since that’s akin to what happened in Virginia where Terry McAuliffe never retreated from running against Donald Trump even to the bitter end:
Carville said the woke left has had a “suppressive effect” for Democrats in races across the country.
“Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something,” he continued. “They’re expressing language people just don’t use and there’s a backlash and a frustration at that. Suburbanites in northern Virginia [and] New Jersey, you know, pulled away a little bit. Youngkin never ran any ads against Biden.”
He said Youngkin “just let the Democrats pull the pin and watch the grenade go off on them. And we’ve got to change this and not be about changing dictionaries, and change laws. And these faculty lounge people that sit around mulling about I don’t know what, they’re not working. Look what happened in Buffalo, again, Seattle, I think the Republicans may have won a city attorney’s race in Seattle, the autonomous zone. Who could even think of something that stupid?”
The idea of a “woke detox center” for misguided Democrats is tantalizing, but that would mean rejecting people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the entire Democratic Party establishment which is now bought and paid for by left-wing causes and activist groups. They cannot simply abandon issues like “defund the police” or dividing people by skin color without risking backlash from their own base, despite ample evidence that left-wing causes don’t win elections.
Even in New York City, the newly elected mayor ran a tough-on-crime campaign and wants to make the city business-friendly again. What happened to socialist mayor Bill de Blasio’s views that business is evil and police should be dismantled?
In Virginia, where voters swung back to the GOP, local issues of education and the direction of a once-great business-friendly state turned McAuliffe’s chances upside down. Embracing stupid issues like calling voters “racist” at every turn does have its limits. Even afterward, as hosts on MSNBC and CNN crowed about “whiteness” winning in Virginia, it seems clear that the “mainstream” of the Democratic Party is now so far left, that Democrats have severely overplayed the “wokeness” card to the point of no return.
Of course, Carville was careful to defend his “good friend” Terry McAuliffe as being “caught up” in this wave:
“I’ve got news for you,” he said, addressing certain activist Democrats. “You’re hurting the party. You’re hurting the very people you want to help. Terry got caught up – he’s a good friend of mine, he’s a good guy, you know, he got caught up – in something national, and we’ve got to change this internally, in my view.”
McAuliffe wasn’t “caught up” in it, McAuliffe embraced it all the way. He regurgitated the outright lie that the tenants and pillars of critical race theory are not woven into the curriculum of Virginia schools, he constantly accused Glenn Youngkin of using “racist dog whistles” about practically everything he said, and he went full throttle on every other stupid woke idea of depowering parents in favor of empowering government. McAuliffe died on his own sword of wokeness.
Preaching to voters and calling them dumb racists doesn’t win elections. Running on the “Parents Don’t Matter” mantra that Terry McAuliffe adopted clearly doesn’t win elections either. Running against safe communities by defunding police departments doesn’t win anywhere, even liberal areas like Minneapolis or Seattle.
Promoting an education curriculum that pits students against each other based on skin color has now been exposed as part of the Democratic Party agenda and will become an issue nationwide in 2022 thanks to parents in Virginia willing to put in the long hours and months of fighting back.
Carville’s words won’t be heeded by any left-wing socialists within the party, but there are a few dozen Democratic Representatives in swing districts that are quietly cheering him on because they stand to lose big as their party drives off the cliff of “stupid wokeness.”
Donate Now to Support Election Central
- Help defend independent journalism
- Directly support this website and our efforts