Democratic strategist James Carville admitted that the Democratic Party has a problem with wokeness, which has surely pushed potential voters away.
Speaking with Vox, the former Clinton advisor said that Democrats need to stop engaging in “faculty lounge politics.”
“If we’re just talking about [President Joe] Biden, it’s very difficult to find something to complain about,” Carville said. “And to me his biggest attribute is that he’s not into ‘faculty lounge’ politics.”
“You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people?” he added. “They come up with a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like ‘communities of color.’ I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t 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. There’s 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 you’re 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 it’s not.”
Though Carville agreed that Democrats should talk more about race and racial justice, he believed that the language used should be something that regular Americans can understand.
“We have to talk about race. 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. This ‘too cool for school’ s*** doesn’t work, and we have to stop it,” he said.
“There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it ain’t 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. That’s a fact. That’s not changing. That’s what this whole damn thing is about,” he added.
Finally, Carville flatly stated wokeness is a problem and few Democrats are willing to admit it.
“Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud,” he said.
James Carville went on to argue that wokeness helped to create a perception that Democrats are a coastal, elitist party.
“I think it’s because large parts of the country view us as an urban, coastal, arrogant party, and a lot gets passed through that filter. That’s a real thing. I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks about it — it’s a real phenomenon, and it’s damaging to the party brand,” he said.