Podcaster Tim Miller said every time Democratic strategist James Carville does a New York Times column, there is “a deranged reaction to it,” but what Carville says is often prescient. This includes his early warning that Biden was too old to represent the party, and the way the party had leaned too far to the left, culturally, while neglecting economic issues culturally in the run up to the 2024 election.
“Once again, he's always a lightning rod,” said Miller, referring to Carville’s recent article “Out with Woke: in With Rage.”
“The Democratic Party must now run the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression,” Carville told the New York Times. “It's time for the Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic attitude an altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is the only way out of our abyss.”
Miller agreed, adding that it had been a fair critique from “the Bernie left” that the establishment Democratic campaigns, particularly the Clinton and Harris campaigns, did not focus enough on the same message.
Miller acknowledged that Harris spoke on economic issues, but there was no “unmistakable platform of economic rage,” as Carville described it.
“Some voters are only going to hear one or two things about you” as a candidate, warned Miller, and Biden and Harris failed to emphasize it enough to leave the “unmistakable impression upon people that they were fighting on behalf of their economic pain.”
Carville, he added, has been making this argument since most people “were in short pants, no matter who you are — unless you're Bernie, I guess.” Carville's been doing this for quite some time.”
Miller had less enthusiasm for Carville’s attack on Democrat “wokeness,” however, being unsure the blame for that fell to Democrats.
“The era of performative woke politics from 2020 to 2024 has left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters,” Carville argued. “The term Latinx was despised even by many Latino people. Calling folks BIPOC should never have been a thing. Defund the police was a terrible idea. Point shows that nearly 70 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party is out of touch and it's more interested in social issues than economic ones. We can no longer be a party with a whiff of moral absolutism.”
“I don't know that any one of those issues really would have mattered that much,” said Miller, pointing out that accusations of New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani being too “woke” fell flat because voters knew Mamdani was instead completely focused on the economic issues facing Americans.
Miller admitted critics will shout “Harris did de-emphasize that stuff,” that she “didn't talk about any of that stuff lefty, cultural stuff at the convention.”
“And that's true. She did. But she didn't emphasize something else,” Miller said. “She allowed herself to be defined because she didn't define herself necessarily, clearly enough for enough voters, around a specific topic or issue that they care about. And in the upcoming elections, that issue for almost every Democrat is going to have to be addressing the economic woes.”
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