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Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville warned on Thursday that far-left candidates winning elections are a liability for the party at the national level.
A wave of democratic socialist candidates winning Democratic primaries in New York City, Abdul El-Sayed’s competitive bid for the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat and Francesca Hong’s frontrunner status in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor have signaled a significant shift to the left for the party.
On the “Politics War Room” podcast, Carville’s co-host Al Hunt said that while he disagrees with the narrative that the far-left is ascendant or poised to take over the party, he warned that “It could create problems for other Democrats with a hyped-up narrative that the left is taking over the Democratic Party” and the attention on such candidates “really do pose problems for what otherwise is a good Democratic year.”
“I agree, and the problem with Michigan and Wisconsin is what happens in the Michigan Democratic primary doesn’t stay in the Michigan Democratic primary,” Carville said. “What happens in the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor doesn’t stay in Wisconsin, and they’re going to be tagged as part of the Democratic Party,”
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While Carville has repeatedly predicted big wins for Democrats in the midterm elections, his mood has somewhat soured in recent months to the point that he has proposed a schism to keep the rising far-left flank out of power.
On Thursday, he rhetorically asked democratic socialists, “Why don’t you get another name? Why are you dragging our names through the mud with your bulls—? If you don’t like it, call yourself something else.”
Carville went on to joke that the term “Democratic” can be appropriated even by tyrannical regimes like the Democratic Republic of North Korea and that America’s democratic socialists are genuinely confusing voters.
“If you’re so against everything, then create your own name! Don’t use our name! Don’t be tainted!” Carville exclaimed. “But I got to tell you, I hope that voters in the primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin understand you’re not just voting for a nominee for Senate in Michigan. You’re not just voting for a nominee for governor of Wisconsin. You’re voting on the image of the entire party, and there’s a lot at stake here. And this is not time for a vanity vote. Not at all. And that’s what this is — a vanity vote and nothing more.”
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Hunt responded by recalling that, after the death of George Floyd in 2020, some Democrats embraced the agenda of defunding the police, which enabled the Republicans to paint the entire party with that agenda. He warned that the same could happen with this new wave of democratic socialists’ far-left ideas.
Carville argued that one key policy from Hong would represent “lunacy of the highest level” to the point it would be a liability for other Democratic candidates when Republicans grill them over it.
“The problem we face right now in Wisconsin: this candidate doesn’t want to defund the police, she wants to abolish the police,” Carville warned. “So if we had a Republican gubernatorial nominee in the state of, I don’t know, Colorado, pick a state, Tennessee — that was advocating lunacy of this level … and this is lunacy of the highest level you can imagine … we would be totally justified in taking that message nationally.”
“We would be totally justified in saying you’ve got to ask these people when they make an appearance if they agree with this,” he continued. “Well, they’re going to do that to us. And I got to say, you go to a person in a tight race — you go to Roy Cooper, you go to Jon Ossoff, you go to Troy Jackson — and you say, ‘Your nominee in Wisconsin said this. What do you answer?’ That’s not a chicken-s— question at all. And you’re just opening yourself up for all of that crap.”
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Fox News Digital contacted Hong and El-Sayed for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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