Honestly with Bari Weiss: James Carville Says Wokeness “Is Over,” 2024 Will Be “Dangerous”—and Much More from the Democratic Political Icon

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Hi, honestly listeners.

Barry here with some amazing news.

Many of you have been asking

when you'll be able to watch the sold out debate

we hosted in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.

You know the one we've been talking about,

the one where we finally and definitively

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The great news is that you can finally watch it for yourself.

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You get to support all of our journalism

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We're releasing the film of the debate this week

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and not just because of Grimes' unforgettable outfit.

So head over to thefp.com forward slash debate

and become a subscriber to the free press today.

Okay, onto the show.

I'm Barry Weiss and this is Honestly.

Two weeks ago, I was in Austin for the Texas Tribune Festival.

Where I interviewed America's best known

Democratic political consultant.

He is so yesterday, if I think of yesterday,

if I think of an old calendar,

I think of George Bush's face on it.

James Carville.

You've probably heard of Carville.

He's been on the scene for a very long time.

He's almost 80 and has worked on countless campaigns.

Somebody has been through a lot of tough elections.

James Carville is known as the raging Cajun in the business.

But his most prominent victory was Bill Clinton's improbable run

for the presidency in 1992,

which was captured in the incredible documentary, War Room.

It's about George Bush and Roger Ailes and Jarjet Mosbacher

and the whole sleazy little cabal of them.

They want to keep hold of anything

and they want to knock anybody off that we believe in

and anything that we care about and if we beat them.

Some people I know watch Notting Hill as a comfort movie.

For me, it's War Room, which tells you a lot about who I am.

Because if they knock us off, then so what?

The next one that comes up, they're going to knock the next one off.

The next one and everything else.

If you know what kind of shit you're going to get,

you're going to get the kind of supreme.

So you can imagine my excitement

when I went to meet Carville backstage before the interview

and noticed that he was wearing the exact same

purple, gold and green LSU striped polo

that he wears throughout War Room.

I laughed because it's pretty ridiculous

to show up wearing a 30-year-old shirt

and I'm pretty convinced it was the same one.

But really, it was also fitting and symbolic.

A whole lot has changed in American politics

over the last 30 years.

But Carville's style, blunt, unconventional, often right, has not.

The western far left is habitually

the most stupid naive people you could imagine.

The people closest to Carville have other ways

of describing the political icon.

Political consultant James Carville,

who is Bill Clinton's top campaign strategist,

is, quote, a pathetic and stupid country bumpkin.

His former business partner, Paul Bogala,

has said that James lives in a border town

between genius and madness.

His wife has said simply, he really is a nut.

Speaking of his wife,

Carville's famous for a lot of things.

He coined the phrase...

It's the economy, stupid.

But perhaps what he's most well-known for

is his marriage to Mary Matlin.

They presume and they accuse conservatives of racism

and they rush to judgment and they...

A Republican party political consultant

who served under Reagan

and was campaign director for George H.W. Bush.

I'm sorry.

Dispensable attitude.

And then they want to have a national dialogue.

I'm not having this conversation with him.

I'm sorry.

They want to have a conversation.

I know, I'm sorry.

But the person...

When he married Mary in 1993,

the press called it a stunt marriage

and speculated it would end soon after.

But three decades later,

Carville and Matlin have proven them wrong.

What's the number one thing you fight about?

The air-conditioned house.

We don't really fight.

We're not good fighters.

We're kind of powder, passive-aggressive.

And I think the reason for that...

At a time where most single people

indicate their partisan preferences

right next to their height requirements on dating apps,

Carville's high-profile, bipartisan marriage

is a pretty rare thing to witness.

And like his striped LSU shirt,

it says a lot about who he is

and what he truly values.

Our conversation was a blast

and in large part that's just because

James Carville is an incredible talker.

He comes up with these phrases I've never heard of.

Some of them are maybe Southern.

Others are just incredibly funny.

But it was also fun because of the people

in the room that day in Austin.

I want you to picture an auditorium crammed,

standing room only,

with about 300 Rachel Maddow diehards.

This room hissed when I mentioned RFK Jr.

They booed before I could even get

Joe Manchin's full name out of my mouth.

When I asked if anyone in the room

identified as a conservative or even a libertarian,

only one hand went up and belonged to a free press staffer.

All of which is to say it made the interview

more contentious than it would otherwise have been,

and that made it more fun.

Today you'll hear James Carville and I talk about 2024,

whether or not he thinks Joe Biden is too old to run again,

why he thinks Kamala Harris has been given

unfair treatment in the press, I disagree,

the direction of the Democratic Party,

why he thinks wokeness is over, I also disagree,

and of course, little things like Trump,

his indictments, and the future of America.

We'll be right back.

James Carville, really happy to have you here.

Well, thank you, Barry, thank you.

I love doing this event.

I get to see so many people, and I love Austin,

so it's great all the way around,

and the community is really fortunate

to have something like the Texas Tribune

that puts on events like this.

This is a nice deal of things.

Plus, you know, you were on the board

of some college you were telling me,

and I think there's a college down the street here.

You know, honestly, I love college.

The best four years of my life

was spent as a sophomore at LSU.

Okay, let's get right into it.

I want to read you part of a speech

that the president gave about a week ago in Vietnam.

The Indian looks at John Wayne

and points to the Union soldier and says,

he's a lying dog-faced pony soldier.

Well, that's a lot of lying dog-faced pony soldiers

out there about global warming.

Remember the famous song Good Morning Vietnam?

I could go on with examples,

but I'll give you just a few more.

On September 11th, the president claimed

that he was at the World Trade Center

the day of the attacks.

He was not.

Last month, he claimed to have witnessed

the bridge collapse in my hometown of Pittsburgh in 2022.

He didn't.

In another speech recently, he claimed

that his grandfather had died just days prior

to his own birth at the same hospital,

which never happened.

I could go on.

So a Wall Street Journal poll taken last month

found that 73% of voters said

that Biden is simply too old to run for reelection.

Do you agree?

Is Biden too old to be president?

And I see certainly too old to be president again

in your view.

So let me make a macro statement

and then I'll answer your question.

I checked this morning.

According to the clock at the Census Bureau,

there are 333,495,611 people currently live

in the United States.

I think we could find two under 75

to run for president.

That's my general view.

Look, I think there's a lot of things

that I would culturally do like about Biden.

He's tenacious.

He's been in politics.

He's been beat up.

He's survived.

He's come back.

He's a state school guy.

But deep down inside,

I wish I wish he wouldn't do this.

I just feel like the country is just

busting at the scenes to get a new generation in there.

And I mean, I can't do anything about the other guy.

But I do think that different times

in a country's history,

where it just goes through periods,

and I do think that right now,

this country is the period where I'll say this

is somebody who's going to be 79

in about a month from now.

Sometimes you got to give other people a shot at this

and people see the Democratic Party

and they think we're old.

And the truth of the matter is,

we've got talent just screaming all over this party

and I'd like to see some of it get out and get showcased.

I think a lot of us imagined,

when we were younger,

this idea of the smoke-filled rooms,

the party machine sort of stepping in and making decisions.

One of the things I think a lot of us,

maybe naively, have sort of been confronted with

is the idea that no such machine exists,

that the party is simply voters.

But are there people around Biden

trying to get him to step aside?

Well, I think that President Biden

has been in politics a long time.

I think he has in place.

I don't know how many actual peers he has.

Sometimes people have been in politics,

they have friends that say,

look, do this, you can't do that.

And the people that have been around him the longest,

I know, are very close friends of mine.

I mean, don't talk to them that much anymore.

Mike Doddlin, you look at the war room,

he was right by my side in the 92 campaign.

We worked together and started in 1986

in Pennsylvania for Governor Casey.

But they worked for him.

And, you know, it's like he comes in,

says, this is what we're going to do,

and they go do it.

And I think that they think,

I mean, what they say is,

look, if you give where the economy is

and look at all the stuff we've got done,

I think by any standard measure,

we deserve reelection.

And if he was 60, I would agree with that totally.

But my own sense is that

it's just one of these periods in the United States

where people are looking for something different.

And I think that Biden,

the Trump, if we broke,

if somebody gave people an actual vote,

I think we'd do much better.

But to be fair,

there's no evidence that he's thinking about not running.

And there's no evidence

that someone is thinking about getting in.

You know, I've led most of my political life

saying what I think,

and I'm probably not going to stop now.

So unless something dramatic changes,

we're looking at Trump v. Biden,

kind of rematch from hell

in a little under 14 months from now.

And many people believe

that this is sort of set in stone.

We talked recently to Liz Smith,

a Democratic strategist,

and she said,

these parlor games are fun for some people to play,

but Joe Biden is going to be

the presidential nominee full stop.

Let's indulge, though,

in a little bit of parlor games,

if you wouldn't mind,

like, is there anything that could upset

what feels like a fair comply?

I don't know.

And I really like Liz.

I think she's really smart.

I think she's one of the really,

I call it up-and-comers.

I guess she's piloted, respected.

And a lot of people say,

what are you doing?

This has decided, you know, fall in.

And I'll probably will have to.

But let me tell you,

if this election were held,

and to be very frank with you,

I think if Trump were re-elected,

it'd be catastrophic.

I think it'd be the end of the Constitution.

Okay?

And I don't think they've very...

And they're telling you that.

All right?

So we've been in the Constitution,

I think we've been living on,

it's like March the 4th, 1789.

And, you know, we've had a pretty good run.

So we're not looking at somebody,

we're not looking at Mitt Romney,

or, you know, George H.W. Bush,

or Eisenhower.

We're looking at a corrupt, treasonous,

guided, would ruin the country.

So, but, but, if we said the election was this November,

let me just give you a hypothetical,

and just to be fair,

the election was this November,

I know it's not, you don't have to remind me.

And in candidates for Joe Biden,

the Democrat, Donald Trump, the Republican,

Joe Manchin, No Labels, and Cornell West,

Green Party, Biden would be an underdog.

Okay?

He would be an underdog,

would be an underdog that you would have

a catastrophic event in American history

of the first order.

And they're already saying,

I'm going to get rid of everybody,

I'm going to get rid of civil service,

we're going to get rid of an independent judiciary,

we're going to get rid of everything.

And they're telling you,

they're not hiding it from you.

You know, people say, well, James,

Biden's going to probably win

if you get him and Trump, and you look at,

you know, so you go to the doctor,

and it says, we're going to form this test,

you're probably going to be okay.

For the 60% chance it's fine,

but the 40% chance you're going to be paralyzed.

You know, if you say, shit, no, get out of here.

Get away from me with that.

And that's the way that this thing feels like to me,

anything that we can do to lessen the chance

for our old remaining time

and our children's remaining time

or whatever, we have a constitution.

Because that's really what we're talking about.

We shouldn't kid ourselves and sugarcoat this,

and, you know, we had two great parties

and two traditions,

and Americans come together

and the tradition of, you know,

going in a boss and buggy

and driving 20 miles and canceling each other's vote.

And, you know, the other thing,

you hear these s-holes like the Cosmos Club,

and they're all around Washington,

and they go, it's institutions in the rule of law,

democracy, and shit.

If you don't give people a choice they want,

that's the first role of a democracy.

Of a strong democracy,

you give people a choice

that at least some people are excited about.

And if you look at the polls,

I'm just telling you what the polls say,

and I'll say it, it never changes.

Somewhere between 72 and 77% don't want this charge.

I'm gonna just give you a consensus number of 75,

between 72, 77, 75, 74 and a half, I don't care.

But they keep telling you this over and over and over again.

So that's the way I feel, Barry.

I feel like this would be catastrophic,

and if you look at what's going on,

there's some chance this guy could win this election

if we don't play this really smart.

So if those are the stakes,

and you look at people who clearly

want to run for president at some point,

whether it's Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer,

Josh Shapiro, the governor in Pennsylvania,

why aren't they doing it?

First of all, and this sounds weird,

but people really like President Biden.

I know it sounds like if you want a friend, buy a dog,

I know all that's true.

To some he said, and Democrats and I'm wanting myself,

that's kind of mean, you really shouldn't do that.

He's older, he's been president.

You know, you got to let him decide on his own terms.

I don't know.

I do notice that the state of talent

in the Democratic Party right now,

right now, is this high level of talent

I've seen in any political party.

I was doing a Bill Cursor's podcast if he's here,

and I said, you know, the 80 Republican field

had all the experience.

That was Reagan and Dole and Bush and I forgot all.

But this, in terms of just raw political talent,

the modern Democratic Party's full of it.

Now, you wouldn't know it,

because it's like watching Secretariat in the barn,

and every horse looks the same in the barn.

You got to get it on the goddamn track to see what it can do.

But there's, trust me, there's real,

real, and it's not Bobby Kennedy, by the way.

Well, let's talk about Kennedy, actually, for a minute.

No, we'll have to. Go ahead.

Why not?

How do you explain his poll numbers?

Because he's not Biden.

Okay, if somebody's like something and they say,

this system doesn't hear me,

and it was like Eugene McCarthy against Lyndon Johnson.

He was a, kind of halfway, he was a senator of Minnesota,

but he looked like he was kind of going to the corner

and read a book before he, like,

and he got 42%.

No one pays attention to Bobby Kennedy's craziness,

things he says or does.

To some extent, why is it Kennedy?

He must be, okay, you know, I remember them, and-

But to be generous, to give him the most generous read,

isn't the reason that Kennedy is resonating,

because he is picking up on so many of the themes

that, frankly, Democrats don't talk about anymore?

The power of big tech, for example, in people's lives.

The dignity of the working class.

Things that I thought, growing up, were mainstays

of the Democratic Party that, frankly,

they're not talking about as much anymore.

Look, the Democratic Party has kind of changed.

We've become more educated.

And we've probably lost a little of that.

But, you know, in terms of the tech stuff,

I wouldn't Trump do about the tech business

when he was proud of nothing.

I don't know what you can do.

I think it's a fair thing to say

that Democrats have sort of lost their connection with working people.

Biden is the last thing but a kind of coastal guy.

I mean, you couldn't explain to him what all this stuff was.

I mean, he's as regular a guy as you can think.

But that's so not who the people that vote in the party are.

And that's why I'd like to see a bunch of these new candidates

out there and people seeing what they had to say.

Who are you most excited about on that bench?

Right. To just sound, I'm excited about whoever Democrats pick.

I'd like to see seven people running on a stage

that had ideas and had energy that could string a sentence together.

And then y'all decide who the hell you like.

But give somebody your choice.

Say, well, you know, she makes sense.

She makes sense. I like that.

But people think of, and I know this when you go talk to people around the country,

what do you think of the Democratic Party?

They think we're an urban old party.

That we are there for people in the cities and all of our leadership is on.

That's not true, but you have to put people out there

and start talking about things where you will change people's minds

because the Republicans will tell you all over again.

And they just say, oh, slobbering.

Just they care about people not like you and the cities and that kind of stuff.

And good candidates will give you sharp definition.

We'll give you concise messaging.

We'll do things that good candidates can do.

And that's why we need this.

The name you hear a lot among sort of centrist Democrats

and never Trump Republicans these days is Joe Manchin.

And there's this kind of fantasy that Joe Manchin.

I'm just, oh, okay.

Well, I mean, first of all, people say,

what does it like to be a moderate Democrat?

And I have no idea because I'm a liberal Democrat.

Okay, I'm pretty liberal.

But Manchin is not.

Are you with the crowd on that?

I like Senator Manchin.

If you look, I'm not going to argue this.

If you look at the votes that has been key old judges,

Bill back better, all of the different stuff.

And a Democrat has not carried a county in West Virginia since 2008.

And so you have all of these people

that don't have to run in West Virginia,

criticizing Joe Manchin for trying to stay alive

in a state that you can't carry.

I have great, but he's not going to be a Democratic nominee

or a factor in national Democratic politics.

Now he could be in no labels, which could, in effect,

take some people who can't stand Trump

but can't stand Democrats, but maybe might vote for us.

I don't think, I don't know the happy ending of no labels.

I understand the whole thing, but I don't think

in terms of national Democratic politics,

Senator Manchin wouldn't be that big a factor.

He probably ran no labels, but he's got his own politics,

and they're not easy at all.

I mentioned him only because he's one of the kind of

wish-casting fan fiction type stories

that feel like are happening right now in the conversation.

Another one of them is about Kamala Harris.

There's a lot of people who are saying,

you know what, we're stuck with Joe Biden.

What if we changed out Kamala Harris?

What if Biden dumped Kamala Harris

and took a vice presidential candidate

who was more exciting to the base?

What do you make of that?

Why are people throwing out that idea?

Is there anything to it at all?

First of all, if you change with Harris,

there are people in the base that really like her.

Secondly, it's a little bit unfair

because the president's approval rating is like 41.

Well, the vice president can't go any higher,

so she has a kind of a ceiling of 41,

so she underperforms.

But I don't think that we can flush all that out.

What I'd like to see is her and about five or six other people

start running to a car delegates and be on TV

and be on your own and see what you can do

and how good your ideas are to stand up.

But I think to some extent,

she's being defined by being in the administration

and maybe her approval is 35

and you say that's not very good,

but she couldn't be any higher than 41 if she was perfect.

But come on, I mean, when she speaks, it's like veep.

To you, sorry.

I mean, I'm sorry.

That's the way, to you, some young person came to me

and said that really, you know, some of that,

you know, I'm not saying it in your case

or in different cases,

but I went through this with Hillary.

Every time a female gets big in national politics,

they get accused of shrieking or, you know,

being fingernails on the blackboard.

Maybe she's not the greatest public speaker in the world,

but a lot of the stuff that's been heaped on her,

I think is telling somebody, some of it is stereotyping.

And every time I see that with a female politician,

it's always fingernails on the blackboard and I don't know

because I'm a male.

I think I might be among the last people

that would be turned off by a powerful woman politician

considering that I am a woman and gay.

I don't say you were turned off by her

or turned off by a powerful woman politician.

I'm just saying that sometimes voters, and we noticed,

you know, if I just take a vote of female,

if I take Sue Jones and Joe Johnson

and that certain things that just the male

of female political science knows that,

that certain qualities that just will get attributed to you

based on your gender.

And I don't know this very, but it does seem to be,

I never hear about males talking in a shrieky voice.

But I'm not saying that you've been...

Do you think she's a good politician?

I'd be fair, she's not one of the all-time greats now.

But the only thing that I know her,

her presidential campaign was she wanted to run for president

in the worst possible way and she succeeded.

But a lot of people run for president

and don't do very well.

Biden ran for president and didn't do very well.

I mean, failure is, to politics, what air is to life.

I mean, but I'll get off of this,

but I think she's not fulfilled her potential.

Well, let's talk about a happier subject,

which is Donald Trump.

So Trump is currently polling at 55%.

The next closest candidate is Florida governor,

Ron DeSantis, I think at 14% right around there.

Every indictment seems to make him more popular among his base.

Is there any scenario in which you see one of these other

candidates in the race unseeding Trump?

All right, so Maga was there before Trump.

The idea that people were under assault from immigrants,

from people of color, from whatever, all right?

It was always a feeling in that we're losing the country.

Trump came in and stoked out a feeling that already existed.

So the whole Republican party is, I'm sorry.

I mean, Lauren Bulbit, Ken Paxton, great.

So we really want to talk about Kamala Harris as being

the problem. I mean, next to Lauren Bulbit, she's Joan of Ock.

All right.

I feel like I'm at a rally.

Okay, so the Republican party Maga fied, but again, to the question,

is there anyone in the race that you just as a political strategist

that you think has a chance of unseeding Trump?

Right now, no, but he's in such legal jeopardy.

If a jury comes back, that will affect people.

And you're starting to see, when things move,

Lenin once said, history goes decades with nothing happening.

And then history goes weeks with decades happening.

All right?

Okay, so I quoted Lenin, great.

So when things start to move, like in Iowa,

and I was looking at something, he said 42 in New Hampshire.

Well, 42 is not that great a number for a former president and their own party.

Honestly, in a normal year, you would see a sitting president in their own party in New

Hampshire be a lot higher than that.

So I would be an idiot if I didn't say the most likely outcome

is that the Republicans nominate Trump.

But, you know, DeSantis is the greatest disaster I've ever seen in my life.

Y'all see the latest story?

I agree with that.

He kicked Tucker Carlson's dog.

What?

I mean, see, Michael Wolf had the story that DeSantis decided he wanted to go see Tucker

and Susie Carlson.

I know, well, he said to cross fire with them, our kids went to school together.

And they're dog people.

And DeSantis kicked one of the dogs.

I guess he ate with his fingers too.

I mean, he had, I mean, there's something wrong with that boy.

He, he, he, I think he, I don't think he's potty trained to tell you the truth.

What do you think was the most foolish thing he did?

Sort of looking back at his candidacy so far?

Was it the war with Disney?

So this woman, her name is Susie Wiles.

Actually, her dad was Pat Summeroff, or some of you guys will remember as a big sports fan.

And she literally made DeSantis's career.

He's, she let him elect Congress and she got him elected governor.

And then Mrs. DeSantis knocked her off, bad move.

She went down to Mar-a-Lago.

And all of this stories on DeSantis is coming from Susie Wiles.

You talk to any reporter that she's on everybody's speed now.

She's leaking the pudding story.

She's leaking every story that there is.

And she's just sticking pins in DeSantis's voodoo doll.

You know, in life, I always tell people, enemies and necessity.

That's okay.

You got to have those.

Those are people, if you're running for an office and somebody else is,

be careful about enemies of choice.

In DeSantis, in Casey DeSantis made a bad decision because she knows,

you know, all the private flights she knows was on the state dime.

And she knows she's got every journalist in the country on her cell phone.

That's what's going on with Brode DeSantis.

He's getting cut up and he don't know which way to turn.

A lot of never Trump Republicans really are looking to Virginia,

to the governor, Glenn Yonkin, who has not entered the race,

who shows basically no signs of entering the race,

but are convinced that he is going to.

Are you hearing anything about that?

Do you think that's a possibility?

Well, there's a big, big election coming up in Virginia November.

And because they're state house, the Republicans have the house 52-48.

The Democrats have the Senate 22-18.

And there is enough in play to make a difference.

Yonkin is going all in, but the Democrats go all in.

But I would point this out.

The Democrats have not lost an election since stops.

Anyway, we just won two last Tuesday night.

And they really trying to, you know, flip the Senate.

And you got big race in Mississippi that, you know,

I'd call a Democrat an underdog, but not overwhelmingly.

A big race in Kentucky.

I'd probably call incumbent Democrat a little bit of a favorite.

Not overwhelmingly.

Louisiana doesn't look all that promising for Democrats.

Virginia state legislative precious.

You're watching the election returns that night.

Watch that one closely.

Let's talk about the legal issues hanging over Donald Trump,

obviously facing for indictments and want to know from you,

which of those do you think is the most serious?

And then separate some sort of from the moral and ethical and legal matter of it.

Do you think politically it matters to him?

Let's hit the second version first.

As of now, it doesn't matter.

He said that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter.

Remember that he was found in a court of competent jurisdiction to have raped someone on Fifth Avenue.

Understand that.

The judge said by any definition what the jury found is Trump raped this woman.

It didn't matter.

So I guess if rape don't count in this country, I don't know what does, but I was,

you know, raised to think that's not a very good thing.

So when criminal defendant, potential defendant comes in, the first thing you look for is defenses.

I cannot think of a single defense he has on Mar-a-Lago.

I mean, understand.

They said he took their stuff.

They came to him and he said, this doesn't belong to you and he wouldn't give it back.

Then he wrote him a letter and he wouldn't give it back.

Then they sent a subpoena and he wouldn't give it back.

And then he hid, he hid the documents under the subpoena.

Then he showed the documents that were to someone else.

What's the defense?

You don't own it.

If I leave here and I take this chair and I say that it's mine because I sat in it

and um many people go say, no, you don't, that's not yours.

Give it back to us.

And they act nice and they tried everything they could.

It's going to be interesting to see if we ever find out why some people say that he's a pack rat.

So I go to the jury store and I take a roll and I says, why are you doing this?

I'm a pack rat.

I just like that.

You know, I just don't, I have no earthly idea how he's going to defend this.

And I don't think they do either to tell you the truth.

Let's talk about President Biden's son, Hunter, just received his own indictment

after the very public collapse of his plea deal.

If the case does end up going a trial, how much of a headache or distraction will that be for

the president?

Could it seriously damage his chances of reelection?

Well, okay.

First of all, the Republicans have opened an impeachment inquiry.

Which you said you're excited about.

I could not be more excited.

I just, but only if they call witnesses.

Okay.

Because let me tell you, Jim Coma is not a very smart man.

In fact, I think he's pretty, I think he's pretty stupid.

Okay.

Jim Jordan, G-Y-M, Jim Jordan, not very smart.

Dan Goldman, smart.

Delegate Plasket, smart.

Jamie Raskin, smart.

They will eat their ass alive.

Alive.

And remember when you call the witness, the other guy gets to play.

And Dan Abrams, who's not hardly a liberal, and he's right.

It's not been one, I owe to evidence to say that President Biden's got any of this money.

Now, if you want to say, Hunter Biden did some really stupid things.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're going making $80,000 a month while your dad is vice president from an energy company.

But I can't tell you that he lied on a gun application.

It's the only time that Republicans never like, ever were against a gun app.

But, but they did.

And they've investigated this guy for what?

How many years?

And, you know, you just got to live with it, but it's not any evidence whatsoever.

And I personally wish open hearings, call witnesses, let's air this thing out.

Let's talk a little bit about the state of the Democratic Party.

Democrats, as we touched on earlier in this conversation, used to be very much perceived

as the party of the everyday ordinary American.

There's a book that's about to come out from John Judas and Ray Tashara,

called Where Have All the Democrats Gone?

And it's about sort of the defection of working class voters from the party.

Reflect a little bit on how that happened.

How did it come to be that the Democratic Party is the party of educated elite, somewhat older voters?

Right. Oh, no, I wouldn't say older, but definitely,

definitely become much more of an educated party over the course of this century that that's true.

Become, you know, less of a presence in places in mid America.

That is definitely true.

Some of it was our own making, which is true.

And, you know, one of the best books that I can recommend on this

was done, believe it or not, a Berkeley academic by the name of Holly Russell Hashi,

who did a book called Strangers in their Own Land by People in Southwest Louisiana,

same thing as Southeast Texas, and how they became Trump people.

Another one is, I can't think of a name of it, but it's by Wisconsin academic Kathy Cramer

on non-college voters in northern Wisconsin.

But a lot of this is cultural.

A lot of it is Democrats gave off airs that we thought that we were, like,

smarter than other people, and Republicans did a good job of exploiting that.

Now, having said that, again, I point out we haven't lost an election since June of last year.

If you look at, you're right, you could say we have all kind of internal contradictions within

the party, although I will caucus folks down the line since Pelosi's been speaker

and now Hakeem is speaker.

But understand this, if you're a Democrat, you know this.

You're really in a coalition, and I like coalitions.

I really do.

I don't want to be in the freaking cult, all right?

I don't want my entire life to be defined by my own ideology.

But if you're in a coalition of nature, you have to be a little uncomfortable.

Because the bigger your coalition is, the more things that come up that will make you uncomfortable.

And what we did have is a significant number of working-class people.

More specifically, we had working-class whites that we have lost ground considerably.

However, and people point out, well, West Virginia used to vote Democratic or, you know,

any other state that used to have Democratic senators from the Dakotas.

True.

And New Jersey and California used to vote Republican.

I mean, you had one trade-off, and in one sense it wasn't a good trade-off.

In the other sense, it was a trade-off we should have never have made.

And we allow a small part of our party, people that described themselves as,

quote, progressive liberal, which is about 10% of the entire Democratic party,

compared to 65% of the Republican party that thinks the election was stolen,

or that the earth is 5,000 years old, or climate with some hoax out of a PR person in Beijing.

All right, this stuff that we get tagged with is kind of silly, right?

I never saw a Democrat that ever wanted to burn a book.

And the day I do, then I'll reconsider.

But, you know, these sons of bitches have banned more books this year than any year in American

history. And they fired some teacher from Galveston or somewhere for reading Andy Frank.

But I got to worry about somebody talking about Latinx, which nobody even knows it was.

It's not, it's just kind of a goofy thing they came up with.

But why do Democrats pay such a price for 10% of the eccentric people in our party,

and the Republicans don't pay a price to the 65% of people in their party that they're just

out and out nuts? I'll just push back on none of the characterizations.

I can't compete with that. But couldn't the reason be that that 10% has an unbelievable

amount of cultural power in America? They control publishing houses, Hollywood studios,

media companies, all of the sense-making institutions of American life. So that's the

difference. First of all, I honestly, and I think you too, but I was very outspoken.

It's over. It's over. The cult of identity left has lost. They're sitting there sputting around

in some art museum or some foundation. It's no one wants to defund the freaking police.

No one wants to call people Latinx for any of that nonsense. My greatest is cultural appropriation.

So if you come to New Orleans and you walk out and you have a sweatshirt and say,

I got bourbon face on shit street, am I going to say, oh my God, you appropriated my culture?

How dare you say that? Or if I come to Austin and I go like I did last night and eat brisket

and coleslaw and baked beans and God knows, you don't say, well, you're not supposed to be eating

that. You're not from Texas. It all became so idiotic. So the term, let me give you a little

history here because the term woke, first time that at least of my limited research skills

came up, was by a guy named Led Belly Ledbetter who was a jazz musician who was born right outside

of Shreveport. I think he died in a jail in Houston. And the term woke was in a song telling

black people in Texas and Louisiana that you should be aware in your interactions with the police,

which I think would be sound advice. I wasn't a black person in Houston in 1925,

but if I got stopped by the cops, I would have, as they say in the Marine Corps,

situational awareness. And then like everything else, some overeducated white people got a hold

to it and started being made woke into some entirely different word than it was supposed to be.

And then that causes us 20 house seats. They can appropriate what they want to

appropriate, but I think that everybody knows that this whole thing was not a very good idea,

and most people have moved on for it. Now, if you use some deputy art instructor,

some underattended overpriced college, oh, man, they'll run your ass out. But they're not

gonna fool with you if any power. They're not gonna fool with me. They're not gonna fool with

Bill Moore. All right? They're just not. And they fine. And when I was at LSU, I was going to class

and somebody called and said that one of my students had got in, I don't know, UT law school.

I forgot what he was. So I stopped at the wine store and I get a $25 bottle of champagne and some

champagne flutes. So I said, okay, you're not going to be get out of one of my classes unless

you know how to properly open a bottle of champagne. It's just that that's just something that you

have to know in life. And so I had the student come up, I said, okay, not put the wine bottle

away from your face because you don't want to lose your eye over this and now take the foil off,

not take the wire. Okay, now what you're going to do is you're going to take the caulk in the bottle

and you're going to don't we don't pop the caulk and you just easily twist opposite ways.

And then when the caulk comes out, the sound you're looking for is the sigh of a satisfied woman

of which it's been and they broke me up for this.

Okay. And I'm like, oh God, I mean, I didn't want to never say that again. I mean,

but that is the way that people have been teaching people to open champagne bottle forever.

So I guess I would say now to, I don't know, I hadn't heard the sigh of a satisfied woman

in 50 years, but I guess I'd say like, you know, a mile burp.

So I got, I got written up and I, you know, I said, well, maybe it's time for me to

move on to do something else in my life.

After the break, James Carville takes questions from the crowd and then indulges us in a fan

favorite lightning round in which he reveals who he thinks Lauren Boebert should date next

and what he thinks is his wife's worst opinion. Stay with us.

Okay. We want to take some questions from you guys. You can stand up at the microphones that are

situated in these middle aisles and then at the end, we're going to end with a quick

lightning round. Please try and keep it to a tight question if you don't mind. Yes.

Can you speak to the role of abortion rights in the upcoming election?

Last August, I was the only national Democrat to go to Kansas and once I got there, I can feel,

I didn't think it was going to end up like this. All right. And what's happened is,

there's been, and I can say Democrats have not lost an election since this. I mean, this issue

is like golden, like nothing I've seen politics and you're having this, well, maybe we can be this

and now they're trying to figure out and Trump's attacking the Sanders on this.

And they're all falling apart because they had presented this issue is so simple.

And there's nothing simple at all. You know, I just said, my daughter just had a,

you know, my first grandson, but there's nothing. And of course, living in Louisiana,

your first thing she got pretty in the first thing I did is called the head of the largest

hospital and say, who is the best lawyer on this in Louisiana? Because if you're having,

if somebody in your family is having a baby in a place like Louisiana, Texas, you better hire

you a lawyer in case something, didn't that a shame? And that's something like the thing you

daughter tells you pregnant and you have your first grandchild and your first instinct is,

we got to get a lawyer. Now we got one. We didn't need it. Thank God. But that's the real effect

of this. Thank you for your question. Go ahead. Yes, I guess. Yeah, I was wondering if a solid

Democrat presidential candidate wanted to initiate a primary, how would they do that?

And how could a Democrat voter help that process? Each like the New Hampshire primary,

you go in there, they have a secretary of state to legislate to make certain requirements. I don't

know. You got to pay a filing fee. You might have certain signatures. But when you run for

president, it's 50 separate elections. All right, there's no national, there's no office of

national filing where you go in and do like you're going to run for Travis County, you know,

be a judge, they call them judges, the head of the Texas, we call police jurors, but everybody's

got their own sort of name for it. But so you, there's a lot of rigmarole you'd have to go through,

but it's not so familiar, but nobody could do it. So it's not going to happen.

You know, I guess as old as I am, you learn to seldom say never. No, you can't say never,

say never, because you just said never. But all things are possible. That doesn't make them

probable, but possible. In the media, there's not much coverage of the possibility of

President Trump going to prison or fleeing the country to avoid that. And in the extradition

treaties with some of these countries, such as Hungary, which is a country that he's been

settling up toward, there's an exception to the extradition treaty. And it's if you're,

if the person is fleeing because of political persecution, the two words that he uses every

time, all the time. So do you think it's a possibility that he could treat it?

Thank you. A lot of people thought this actually, I think it's the UAE that we don't have an extradition

treaty with. But if I were him, I'd go to take the top floor to Ritz Colton, Moscow.

Now, the danger is if Putin dies and gets knocked off, they're going to come get you. But

I'm serious. If I was Trump and I'd known the legal jeopardy that he's in,

I'd get the hell out. I would really think about blowing this pop sand.

All right. I'm serious. I think your question is relevant. And when you start looking at the

accretion of stuff, yes, he could win, assume the courts are alive and apart himself, which is not

a guarantee. He's not a guarantee. He's no way, he still can't do anything about Georgia. And he

still got all this stuff in Manhattan. And he's a career criminal. And you know what career criminals

do? They commit crimes. That's the nature of what they are. And they'll keep pursuing him.

But he's in a bucket load of legal trouble. The people around him are in a bucket load of

political trouble. I mean, look at Rudy Giuliani. If he's broke and he's going to be broker,

my idea for him is to date Lauren Bulbert.

They could go see Beetlejuice a second time. Yeah, right. God, man, that was some,

in that morning, Barry, Washington loves the story. So it's a political

officer about how she's moderating and becoming an effective legislation. And that night,

because Washington loves the story of how they civilize people. People come here and then they

see us and you know. James in 92, it was, it's the economy stupid. In 24, what is the Democratic

catch line? That's a very straight question. You remember, it was the first thing was changed

versus mortising. Second thing was economy stupid. Third is don't forget health care.

I think what people feel, and I think the economy is good, you can't just kind of hard not to

target that. But people don't, that they're not starting to feel it yet. Is it because they think

that the president is too old? They can't think beyond that. Is it because the gas prices are

high that cuts into whatever gains they might have from some income growth or some moderate

inflation? I don't know that I know the answer to that. But I guess if it was

Biden beat Trump, you know, we can't go back. I mean, forge ahead or anything

kind of forward looking back. As of right now, you don't get enough credit for the economy. Now,

the hard thing you're doing politics is you're at a meeting and says, we're not getting credit

for economy. And somebody says, well, you know, actually, unemployment rates lowest has been since

1969 or, you know, the, et cetera, et cetera. And so, well, if we don't take credit for it,

how are we going to get credit? But then if you go out and you tell people the economy is good

and they don't think it's good, they say, well, that person doesn't even know what's

going on in my life. How can he go there and say the economy is good when I'm working two jobs?

I'm paying $4 a gallon for gas. No one knows the right answer to the right time.

So what the president's people would say is Reagan was at 82 in September of 83 at 42 and

Clinton was at such and such in September of 95, Obama in September of 2011. But right now,

the perception of people, I don't know if it's the actual economy or people just looking for some

kind of change, but that's just where we are. And it's, you can statistically, we have a good

economy is something not to convince people. Go ahead. Yes, sir. You guys are great, by the way.

So I would just point out that Biden came out of that race with all that talent that you were

talking about. I'm not even someone who supported him in the primary, but he did come out of one of

those. I share some of your concerns. But the thing that I would ask is there's a lot of talk about

who can win, but I'm concerned that the results are going to be such that they might not matter

with what's going on in Wisconsin and other places. How much concern do you have that they

figured out what went wrong last time? And they're going to try to get away with it this time with,

you know, a lot of Republicans that did the right thing have been replaced by people who have

committed to doing the wrong thing next time. So how much concern do you have about that?

So Barry, you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, see, I said, you have any thoughts on that?

They want to know your thoughts, not mine. They don't give a shit about me.

Rightly so. Of course, in Wisconsin, the Democrat wins a Supreme Court seat by 13 points,

and they want to impeach him before he takes office. Look at what they did to redistricting.

I mean, and then you had three votes for an independent legislative theory in the Supreme

Court. I mean, how many Supreme Court justice are you away from that? I think the most significant

event in American politics of my lifetime, and I was born, Franklin Roosevelt was president,

was Bush v. Gore in 2000, because I just said we can get away with it. We're just going to stop a

goddamn vote count. And you know what these liberals are going to do? They just go, whoo,

they're going to jump in the hall, they're going to go around in the circle, and they

hell with them, they'll just all fall in line. And guess what happened? We took it,

they stopped the vote count that Gore was going to win without any doubt. They were going to order

a statewide vote count. And then they said, well, we'll just gerryman to every seat. There's nothing

they can do about it. Then they said, we'll just do away with voting rights. And John Robinson,

2013 said to the absolute shock of anybody who lives in this country, there's no racism left

in America. Oh, really? Jesus Christ, man. Do you really believe that? Then they come with

Citizens United and just let his, you know, the Koch brothers turned a goddamn country over to them,

and they kept doing one thing after another. And people said, now, I think the Dobs thing finally

lidded a cooking jar kind of slammed on them. But it had not happened since then. And you know,

Bush v. Gore, we started a war. Do you know that from 1994 to 2004 assault weapons were illegal

in the United States? Did you know you couldn't buy one? All right. And how many people would be

alive? You know, people doing 1996, hunting, going fishing, going to target practice, marksmanship,

they're blowing the gun up. You just couldn't buy an assault rifle and go shoot up 40 kids with it.

And that's the truth. And they didn't care. Because the people that think like the people in this

room think we were not tough enough. We were not active enough. We didn't say, no, you can't do this

in this country. You can't stop a freaking boat count in the middle of it. Because, you know,

we were taught to salute the flag and move on. And just watch it. If anything goes wrong, the

Constitution of the United States is not going to be a factor.

I've got to stand up on my test. Hi, James. First, I want to say welcome back to Texas.

And we're looking forward to joining you next year and hook them. We don't play y'all next year.

We came, y'all owe us a game in Baton Rouge just so you know. But we're ready. Okay, go ahead. I'm

someone who has worked on campaigns before the Democrats would say to each other,

we just have to get out the vote. And now I'm wondering, do you think that that is still the

truth? Or are we even past just getting out the vote? That's a it's a very good question. And

when we, you know, so you see this and it's always I can give you its election day and

it's whatever. Okay. And now we're going to go to James and sit on that side and outside

in suburban Philadelphia. Well, I'll tell you what, it's all about turnout. You know,

you talk to the Republicans and they say it's about turnout. You talk to the Democrats about

turnout. Well, we went to a voting booth in North Philadelphia and they said they were at 45%

of turnout in the election before. But we went to, of course, it's about who votes in what proportion.

And the problem that we have right now is black voters are not turning out. And this is over

a series of elections, very under reported. And under 30 are not that excited. A Democrat can't

win without robust black turnout and robust youth turnout. And right now, we're not getting it.

Okay. So in 1992, there are 3100 plus county or county equivalents in the United States.

So you have counties, we have parishes, some people have independent cities.

Of that 3100 plus in 1992, 96 were supermajority. That meant that one party carried it by 75 or

25 or more, more than 50. In 2020, they were almost 1400. All right, which shows you that

the geographical polarization is something, but also how of that 1400, the ones that are Democratic,

how they turn out compared to the Republicans, is a big issue. And that's why enthusiasm is such a,

clearly should be a part of strategy everywhere. But thank you for the question.

Okay. One last question. Thank you. Yes. Keep it really short and then we're going to do a

one minute lightning round where we're going to ask about Mary Madeline and her worst viewpoints.

Yes. All right. So I keep hearing this narrative that we're not having a primary. There's no one

running, but there are in fact people running. And I'm not just talking about RFK Jr. Mary Ann

Williamson is running. And this election really is about a fight for democracy. So why do the

Democratic Party, why do they keep trying to sell us the idea they're going to save us from

democracy by preventing a Democratic primary? Okay. Maybe she's not the one. Maybe Biden is

the one. Can I give you a job? Do you like to come work? Yeah. Thank you for framing it.

Yeah. Yeah. We want to give people, you know, this is my kind of message is

patriotic people will come out and vote just to stop the end of the Constitution, but it'd be

better if people were excited about it. I couldn't agree with you more. Okay. We're doing a quick

lightning round. Sorry. We couldn't get to all of the questions. James, very short answers. One

sentence. What is your wife's worst opinion? My wife's what? Worst opinion? Her worst opinion.

I was thinking that the Iraq war was any good. What is what is one thing she has changed your

mind about? You know, always bringing a gift when you go to somebody's house.

I've given me kind of an appreciation I never had before for like spatial issues.

So if my wife, let me tell you this, when she dies, of course, and let's assume there's a heaven

and you get to do it, heaven would make you happy. St. Peter's going to say he wants you to move

furniture between now and the term. Just move this around and move that around.

Every time I turn, I got my chat and I watched my games in and I got everything by it.

And I sit in the chairs in a different place. Well, you didn't have enough back there. Okay,

fine. And I've just learned that wherever something is today is not going to be at a bar.

What is the best book you read recently? The book I'm reading right now called The

Identity Trap by Yasha Monk. And it really deconstructs this identity politics, which I

think was a giant mistake, not just politically, but a giant mistake. Your identity will never,

to me, will never triumph your philosophy or your quality as a person.

Your favorite American president of all time?

Clinton second Lincoln first by four.

Okay, one word, one single word for the following people. Donald Trump.

Go to jail. One word, Joe Biden.

Man, one word. One word. Think about it. I guess there's three. Okay.

Vivek Ramaswamy.

Well, I gotta tell you. So here's somebody. He's everything.

He's everything that they like. He's got a name you can't pronounce. He went to Harvard. He's a tech

bro. He's a freaking idiot. I'm going to go with idiot. Cornell West.

Dangerous. Very dangerous. Chris Christie.

Dedicated. Josh Shapiro.

Potentially Clinton as talent. Wow. Last question. If you had to vote right now,

money on the table, who's going to win in 2024? Who's it going to be?

Well, I say the Democrats. My rationale is we're just not losing elections.

And I don't know, of course, if something happened dramatically between nine and 2024.

But, you know, I am a horse degenerate and we do pay some attention to past performances. But

right now, if we were to nominate, you know, we would have an open process.

We'd get 54. I mean, the country does, they don't like dobs. They don't like the Republican

authoritarianism. They don't like this stuff. But remember, you got Cornell West and you got no

labels and it's not, it's not matched up one-to-one. It's dangerous. I'll tell you that. Very dangerous.

James Carville, all of you. Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening. If you like this conversation, if you felt like you got

to know James Carville in a new way, if his ideas annoyed you, if they worried you, if

this conversation made you question your assumptions or consider a different point of view,

that's all great. That's what we're trying to do here on this show.

Share this episode of Honestly with your friends and family and use it to have an

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