James Carville Worries Identity Politics Will Become a ‘Drag’ on Democrats: ‘English Faculty at Amherst Has too Much Power in This Party’

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Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville is worried his party could lose ground in upcoming elections due to its position on social issues.

“I got to tell you, I’m a supportive, ardent Democrat, passion and everything, but the English faculty at Amherst has too much power in this party,” Carville said in an interview this week with former Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. “They really do. And they come up with all of these different things, and when people see that, they don’t like it because it’s not what their life is.”

He cited efforts to defund the police as a chief example of what he founded concerning, saying it had been “a terrible drag” on Democratic candidates, as well as “cancel culture” and identity politics.

“I don’t know of a single person that thinks of themselves as a ‘person of color,'” Carville said. “I really don’t. I had Ruben Gallego, who’s a Democratic congressman from Arizona, and we did much better in Arizona than we did in Texas or Florida, and he said, ‘I’ve never heard anybody use the word LatinX.’ And that’s just not the way people talk. It’s not what they — It’s just not the way.”

Carville, 76, served as chief strategist on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, and later as an adviser to Hillary Clinton during her 2008 campaign against former President Barack Obama. However, he suggested that older Democrats would become a drag on the party if they didn’t begin stepping down from top positions — and named Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Conor Lamb (D-PA), and former Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) as young Democrats he liked.

“What happens is the speaker’s 80-something, the party is 80-something and there’s just a lot of — the committee, chairs, there’s a lot of baggage there, and they’re going to have to … do something to let this young talent shift up because they’ll start losing races,” Carville said.