Professional Cloud Yeller James Carville Slams ‘Preachy Females’ In Democratic Party
He can’t stop thinking about yesterday.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s interview last week with Democratic political consultant James Carville is the aggrieved white male version of an ouroboros loop. It ends pretty much where it begins.
When Carville taught at Louisiana State University, he once instructed his students on the proper way to open a bottle of champagne.
“You don’t pop it like you see in the movies or you’re going to poke somebody’s eye out. You take the foil off. Now you’re going to take a dishcloth, and you’re going to execute the classic counterclockwise movement. The bottle is going to go one way; the cork is going to go the other way. You just ease it out, and the sound that you are looking for is the sigh of a satisfied woman.”
The next day, the dean informed Carville that a female student had complained about the “satisfied woman” line. This infuriated Carville, who told Dowd: “This was L.S. freaking U., not Oberlin. It was terrible. I wouldn’t take the coeds to dinner after class. I would take the male students. I was scared to death in my job. I was like: ‘I don’t need L.S.U.’s money. I don’t need to drive up there and listen to that crap.’ I just said: ‘That’s it. I’m done. This is not for me.’”
Carville, who’s 79, refused to learn anything from that female student’s reasonable complaint. Instead, he sees her as emblematic of everything wrong with modern liberalism.
Carville’s political relevance ended decades ago. Dowd bills him as the “mastermind of Bill Clinton’s election,” and a featured player in the documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign, The War Room. He’s had very few triumphs since then, but he is the subject of Matt Tyrnauer’s upcoming documentary Jamboree: Carville’s Last Crusade. It’s fitting that Dowd, who’s rarely said anything positive about the Clintons themselves, helps inflate Carville’s oversized ego.
“If you were going to ask me what I’d want the title of the documentary to be? When Politics Was Fun,” he told Dowd. “There was actually a time when people loved doing this. People would go out, they’d drink, they’d talk to everybody, they’d leak stories. Generally, when it was over, you’d go sit with the other side and have drinks together.”
Overgrown boys just wanna have fun
Carville is married to Republican political strategist Mary Matalin, and the two famously met in 1992 when Matalin was working on President George H.W. Bush’s campaign. It was something out of a movie, but one where you might cast Michael Keaton and Geena Davis in the starring roles. Politics probably was more fun when the white (mostly) men playing the “game” knew their own personal freedom wasn’t at risk. The stakes are much higher for members of marginalized groups, who’ve dared spoil Carville’s fun.
Politics now, Carville said, is filled with hatred and doctrinaire positions.
“Hubert Humphrey used to describe himself as ‘the Happy Warrior,’” he said. “If somebody said, ‘I’m a happy guy’ right now, they’d go: ‘What’s wrong with that guy? Don’t you realize the evil in this world?’”
This is remarkably ahistorical. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1775 that “I am one of those, too, who, rather than submit to the rights of legislating for us, assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experience has shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole Island in the ocean.” His freedom wasn’t a game.
American democracy is under assault, and I’m sure it’s uncomfortable for Carville that the threat includes so many of his former drinking buddies. However, he chooses to blame vulnerable people — particularly women — for the damage a radicalized GOP has inflicted upon them.
Carville claims the Left has grown too “censorious” and “woke.” We aren’t nice enough to Trump voters, calling them “deplorable” and stupid instead of patiently explaining how Trump has betrayed them. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course, but here’s where he swerves into MAGA territory:
“No one wants to live like this,” he whined. “Who ever thought it was a good idea to tell people you can’t hug them or you’ve got to be careful or you’ve got to think about names to call them other than the name you know them by?”
I grew up in the Bible Belt during the 1980s, and no one randomly hugged strangers. It wasn’t considered a personal imposition, either, to refer to a married woman by her new name. Before everything was “politically correct” and “woke,” people had “manners.”
It gets worse.
Lately, he has been obsessed with Biden bleeding Black male voters.
“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females” dominating the culture of his party. “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’”
Yes, he really said ‘preachy females’
I think the average American does in fact recoil at fundamentalism and judgy politics. It’s a somewhat apolitical response. The same voter who rejected “family values” in 1992 might also have an issue with so-called “cancel culture.” However, Carville insists on smearing women as the problem. It’s especially vile when he blames Democrats’ “feminine” messaging for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat and the resulting loss of Roe v. Wade.
Carville’s blatant misogyny isn’t new. He once criticized Barack Obama in crudely gendered terms, saying that if “Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he’d have two.”
The rightful backlash to Carville’s remarks have so far missed how he projects his own rigid white masculine beliefs onto Black men. He also presumes to speak for Black people in general.
Although he is worried about the president’s strength in this race, he said: “I actually like Biden. He’s a tenacious guy that’s had a real life. He’s a state school guy. He doesn’t have an iota of elitism. He doesn’t even know what ‘woke’ is. He’s been demonstrably the best president that Black America’s ever had, Clinton and Obama included. You look at incomes, employment, poverty rates, access to health care. It’s not where whites are, but it’s closer than it’s ever been.”
Maybe Black people are the best judge of which president’s policies have benefitted us the most? Carville elevates Biden over Clinton and specifically Obama because he personally relates the most to Biden. He’s oblivious to his own bias, and he’s not through yet.
“If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’”
The Democratic elite might no longer take Carville’s phone calls, but that doesn’t make him a man of the common people. Maybe he should turn off NPR and listen to Black women. There’s no evidence he consults any Black women — within the party or everyday voters — before expressing his Jurassic-era opinions.
Carville should understand that politics is about rewarding and elevating your most reliable voters, the people who volunteer at campaign headquarters, knock on doors, and phone bank. Democrats fundraise on the legitimate fears of marginalized groups, and they definitely haven’t over-performed in recent elections because of white men. I’d argue that the party still gives way too much consideration to white men and continues to take Black women for granted.
The Republican Party prioritizes the same segment of the electorate that it did in 1992. The Democratic Party’s focus has changed dramatically, and the party’s leaders more closely resemble the very people who put them in power. Carville can’t stand this, and it’s probably why he dismisses the first Black woman president with this clumsy baseball analogy:
He said most of the criticism of Kamala Harris is misogynistic, but added: “She reminds me of this great baseball player. He got arms that big. Can’t wait to see the guy. He takes three pitches and walks back to the dugout.”
It’s no surprise that Fox News praised Carville’s remarks and compared him to the network’s own Greg Gutfeld. Carville should consider that “compliment” an insult and one he richly deserves.
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“I’d argue that the party still gives way too much consideration to white men and continues to take Black women for granted.”
This right here. I am so fucking tired of this old white mansplaining. This is why we are here fighting for our reproductive rights while they’re complaining about us gals not being one of the boys, belching and sucking it up as we throw ourselves backwards to submission.
Fuck you Carville.
In all of Carville's drivel, there is one good point that bears repeating--your side needs to be seen as the happy, positive, fun side. It is hard to appeal to people with dour negativity, as that both turns off those who don't already feel that way and can overwhelm those who do (sometimes you need light at the end of that tunnel). So while on the one hand we don't want to underplay the high stakes, we do have to find a way to look like we're having fun while attacking our opponents. Humor is underrated in politics!
As for "hang out with our opponents when it's over" that might make sense when you're dealing with Romney vs. Obama, or Clinton v. Dole. But it's unhinged to suggest this when we are battling against people who deny that we are even people, let alone fellow citizens. Can you imagine sharing a beer with Steve Bannon at the end of a campaign day?