“It’s the economy, stupid,” was James Carville’s famous slogan when he ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. But for 2026 and beyond, his advice for Democrats is: It’s the woke language, stupid.
During a Q&A session following a screening of the documentary Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid Feb. 19 at the UGA Special Collections Libraries, the “Ragin’ Cajun” excoriated his fellow Democrats for emphasizing identity politics and an attitude of “cultural arrogance” that’s off-putting to rural, Southern and working-class voters.
“You’ve got to talk in language that people understand,” he said. “…If you sound like you’re on NPR, you’re doomed. A lot of politics is what you say, but a lot is how you say it.”
The sort of academic-sounding jargon Carville thinks Democrats should abandon alienates not only white men, but Black men as well. He pointed to a hypothetical voter in South Atlanta who just wants to go home, drink a beer and watch football after getting off work.
“Southern Blacks don’t buy that [woke] shit,” he said. They want someone who will show up in their communities and speak authentically, which is how Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, beat former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 primary. Tsongas, who died in 1997, “wasn’t going to go to a goddamn Black church,” Carville said.
“I hate the term ‘person of color,’” he continued later, “because it’s a white person’s view that people who aren’t white are all the same. It’s racist.”
While Donald Trump has always been popular among white men, Kamala Harris struggled to win over Black and Hispanic men in 2024 because, according to Carville, her campaign put too much emphasis on winning women. “We’re 48% of the electorate,” he said. “We’re not a minor afterthought.”
Carville was one of the first prominent Democrats to call on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race—even before his disastrous debate performance in June—and at one point early in the film, he says someone else would win 54% of the vote. Obviously, that didn’t happen—because Democrats didn’t hold a primary before anointing Vice President Harris, according to Carville. “We played the Super Bowl with our second-string quarterback, and we lost by a point and a half,” he said.
Despite spending $1.5 billion, Harris was not able to give voters a clear reason to vote for her, Carville said. “People wanted something different,” he said. “Democrats couldn’t offer something different… When people want something different, no matter how repugnant, they’re going to get it.”
The turning point in the race, he said, came when Harris whiffed on a question on “The View” about whether she would have done anything differently than the unpopular Biden, and Harris said nothing.
Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid, directed by Matt Tyrnauer and released in October 2024, traces Carville’s roots from rural Louisiana to becoming one of Democrats’ top strategists—including running Zell Miller’s campaign for Georgia governor in 1990. One of Miller’s key campaign planks was the HOPE Scholarship. Carville attributed the idea to “three roofers in London, KY” who suggested a lottery to fund education when he was working on Wallace Wilkinson’s successful 1987 campaign for Kentucky governor.
Recalling his time at Louisiana State University before joining the Marines, Carville quipped that “I had a 4.0—it was my blood alcohol level.” He later returned, finished his undergraduate degree and graduated from law school. The documentary also delves into his marriage to Republican operative Mary Matalin, whom he met when she was working on President George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election campaign.
Flagpole asked Carville what he thought about Sen. Jon Ossoff’s re-election chances in 2026. He predicted a close race and said not to count Ossoff out. “He’s a pretty diligent guy,” Carville said. “You’re not going to outwork him, I can promise you that.”
Asked whether Gov. Brian Kemp would run against Ossoff, Carville said he doubts it. “I think he wants to be president one day,” he said, and may not want to run the risk of losing a Senate race that would kill his chances.
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