James Carville’s advice for Biden

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Democrats have a problemsays James Carvilleand it is not Joe Biden. It’s not even Donald Trump and his MAGA hordes, not really. “Democrats of a certain kind feel really good when they lose,” the longtime political strategist said Sunday during a panel at The Ankler and Pure non-fiction‘s latest Documentary Spotlight event. “Fuck Losing.”

Carville has no time for progressive virtue-mongering and demands for “100 percent purity,” which only distract from the goal: victory. “If you want to feel good and smug, that’s fine,” he said. “But without power, what difference does it make?”

Carville shared the stage with the filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer (Where is my Roy Cohn?, The Reagans), which follows 79-year-old Ragin’ Cajun on his cross-country journey to get Biden re-elected.

“I was taught early in my career that our job is not to predict elections, but to influence them – and we have to try to win this thing,” Carville said. “I don’t think it was the best idea I’ve ever heard” for Biden to run again, he added. “But here we are … and we’re up against a wall.”

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Carville’s advice to the Biden team: “Take the attack to the next level. Don’t argue with them, just flood the zone and be more direct.”

In particular, he wanted to send the message that the Republican Party is “getting ready to take birth control away from you.” Carville was the only national Democrat running in Kansas in 2022, Tyrnauer pointed out, when a constitutional amendment on abortion was on the ballot there. The proposal, which would have allowed the state to restrict or even ban the procedure, was defeated by a vote of 60 to 40.

“Kansas has shown in some ways that we have some power on this issue,” Carville said. “We haven’t lost an election since. Dobbs”, the Supreme Court’s decision, the Roe v. Wade.

In their conversation moderated by Pure Non-Fiction’s Thomas PowersCarville and Tyrnauer recalled the lessons of the groundbreaking 1993 document The War Room. DA Pennebaker And Chris HegedusThe film documents the Bill Clinton campaign and its numerous crises, from Flowers Gennifer‘ from exposing her affair with the candidate to publishing a letter Clinton wrote to avoid being drafted to Vietnam.

Clinton gave Tyrnauer an interview about Carville’s role in the survival of his campaign. “James with Clinton and George Stephanopoulos “He invented a strategy to, as President Clinton told me, ‘throw himself into the fire,'” Tyrnauer said. “He taught the Democrats how to win.”

Carville has been “an insurgent this cycle,” the filmmaker added, calling on Biden to drop out and have an open convention. “He’s pissed people off everywhere.”

But the Biden campaign needs a James Carville, Tyrnauer argued, “to tell them how to face the issue and actually dish out as much as they take in.”

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Carville also wants the campaign to meet American voters where they are. “Stop telling people the economy is doing well and start telling them what you’re going to do to help them get through what’s coming,” he said. “People believe corporate greed is driving this inflation, and they’re convinced. Well, give the public what it wants. Let’s say we’re going to introduce antitrust laws — these airlines, these insurance companies, they’re all manipulating prices, and you’re the one who’s getting the short end of the stick. Instead of telling people, ‘Your life is great,’ tell them how you’re going to make their life better.”

Framing is the task, Carville added, even in a fragmented media age. “We have all kinds of new ways of communicating, but at the end of the day it’s what you communicate and how you frame that communication that matters, what gets through to people. Let someone else figure out how to get more traffic on social media, how to do this and that. Real politicians should think about How do we frame this and what do we bring home? Let people with an IQ of 185 figure out how to get it out there. Let people with an IQ of 110 say, “No, this is getting way too damn complicated.”

As Tyrnauer pointed out, Carville actually makes the most of multiple platforms – as a prolific commentator on cable news, but also through podcasts, including his own. Political War Room“Everything is done on the road from the suitcase,” added Tyrnauer, “which is well stocked with LSU regalia and a few travel bottles of Maker’s Mark.”

Tyrnauer plans to finish and release his documentary in the fall, before the election. “The director and I agree that winning is the key to this whole thing,” says Carville, who is also betting that the documentary will get aspiring politicians to enter the arena he loves. “I hope when someone sees this film and comes out, (he thinks) that people had a pretty good time. OK? It’s not a hair shirt, OK?”

His suggestion for the film title: “It used to be fun, and now it can be fun again.”

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