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Earlier this week, my man James Carville, the Ragin Cajun, did a column in the New York Times, and every time Carville does a New York Times column, there is this deranged reaction to it. I mean, kudos to the man. It shows his skill at getting attention, I guess. When it comes to James, the way I see it, most of the time he's right. Sometimes he's wrong. It's like any one of us probably would have benefited the Democrats to listen to him a little bit more back in 2022 and 2023 when he was the one out there saying that Joe Biden was too old to run and that the move to the left on cultural issues was hurting the party. Seems that is objectively correct at this point. So you know, he's got some hits from time to time. This week's song, though, I find both correct and also a little Bit obvious. It's, it's a little, it's kind of like an intensified version of the tune that James has been singing, that little zydeco tune he's been singing since like 1988 or so. And yet the reaction to it was pretty funny. Once again, he's always a lightning rod. So let's take a look at the column here and then I'll, I'll give you my $0.02. Headline, James Calville out with woke in with rage. New York Times knows what they're doing. Trying to get clickbait there. He doesn't even really get to woke until about halfway down the article. So we'll talk to that. I want to talk about where he really begins and what his focus is. And that is the rage part of the headline about how the Democrats need to be the party that is enraged that the economic system is failing Americans. He begins by writing that know we're a couple weeks in the government shutdown now and nobody's even talking about it anymore. Government shutdowns don't impact the midterms. What he's been saying the whole time. And that the only thing that will actually persevere, the only thing that will from, from right now that will be relevant next November is the economic status and economic pain. The only thing that will persevere is the state of the economy and the economic pain that people are feeling. Carvel, you know, basically makes a case for how Democrats can deal with that. I want to read a little bit from the part that's getting a lot of attention. I am now an 81 year old man. He's making sense for an 81 year old man. The mind is still strong. I'm now an 81 year old man and I know that in the minds of many I carry the torch from a so called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run the most populous economic platform since the Great Depression. It's time for the Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable unstakeable platform of pure economic rage. This is the only way out of our abyss. To me it's just, it couldn't be more abundantly clear that this is true. I think that it is a fair critique from people on the Bernie left that the, you know, campaigns, that the establishment Democratic campaigns, particularly the Clinton Harris campaigns, did not focus enough on this or to use a lefty term, did not center this enough. I think that, you know, I asked Vice President about this last week, actually. And I think that she said, you know, that they did talk about. She referenced how she talked about the sandwich generation and the economic pain the sandwich generation was feeling. And so to me, it was a little bit less about whether they talked about it and what they said than the emphasis. Like, what was the emphasis? Did you sell to voters that the thing you cared about was their economic pain and you were. And you were passionate about it. What's the word that Carville uses here, that there was there an altogether unmistakable platform of economic rage? Of course not. No, it's not unmistakable. It was a little bit mixed in with a bunch of other issues. And, you know, some voters are only going to hear one or two things about you. Some things are. Some voters are only going to sense a couple of things about you. And I don't know that Clinton or even really Biden to that, to be honest, in his successful campaign or Harris left an unmistakable impression upon people that they were fighting on behalf of their economic pain. And so I think that Carville's message there is right. That is what has left a lot of people who are, you know, who kind of are in the Bernie side of the party to say, like, duh, where y' all been? Where y' all been? And like I said, I think that's a fair critique of the Democratic. Democratic campaigns and the more established Democratic campaigns. It's not really a fair shriek of Carville. I did find this funny as I was kind of going through social media, looking at the reaction to this. A lot of people, like, we even have James Carville on board now. And I'm like, you know, I get that not everybody's getting old like me. And so they might not remember the 92 campaign. I mean, Carville has been saying, it's the economy, stupid. We should focus on the economy for his whole career. And if he's known for anything, it's for, it's the economy, stupid. This notion that the party should focus on economic issues and tack to the middle on social issues has been something that Carville's been arguing since before Zoran Mamdani was born. So I give. A lot of the younger Zoran fans are like, we've won over Carville. It's like, okay, I think you're winning the argument. And that's good. And I think that it's good when other people pick up this refrain on the left, because I think it's a useful one, particularly in contrast with MAGA and with what's happening with Trump right now. In his gilded ballroom and gilded palace with his, you know, Silicon Valley oligarch buddies. But I just, you know, I just got to defend my man the raging Cajun's honor here on this one a little bit, because he'd been doing this since you were in short pants, no matter who you are, unless you're Bernie, I guess Carville's been doing this for. For quite some time. So let's get to the second part of that argument. Like, what does that mean? Out with the woke, in with this economic populism. Here's Carvel. For this to work, we can't get sidetracked on our message. The Republican Party's greatest weapon has always been its uncanny ability to turn us against one another. It cannot be said enough. The era of performative Woke politics from 2020 to 2024 has left a lasting stain on our brand, particularly with rural voters and male voters. The term Latinx, or Latinx, as I like to say, was despised even by many Latino people. Calling folks bipoc should never have been a thing. Defund the police was terrible idea point shows that nearly 70% of Americans think the Democratic Party is out of touch and it's more interested in social issues than economic ones. We can no longer be a party with a whiff of moral absolutism. We can correct this only by looking toward the future, always in every situation possible, and pivoting to a form of economic rage as our response. This is right. Like, look, we can. And I've had this out with James, and we can keep doing this. We will do it just for kicks from time to time on the show. You know, you can debate the degree that, like, this is even the Democrats fault. Like, how. How much did the woke stuff get out of hand? You know, like, on most things, I take kind of a moderate northern road view on it. And I think that there was some overreach for sure. I could tell you some stories about taking my kid to tour kindergartens in the Bay Area. Whoa. You know, some of the shit they be talking about during those tours, I was like, okay, y', all, let's. Let's die. Let's. Let's reel it back in. Reel it back in on. On, you know, teaching kindergartners about, like, the Black Panther's path to social justice. So, you know, sure, there was overreach on various things. Absolutely. Is it unfair? In part, yeah, sure, of course. Is there an obsession with certain groups of people with litinks and. And defund the police? Yeah, of course. But, like, as A broad. Again, this takes us back to the first point about unmistakable. I, I don't, I don't know that any one of those issues really would have mattered that much. I, I do, as I've said many times, I do think it benefit a Democratic candidate to have a heterodox opinion on one social issue. I literally don't care which one. It is just something people, that people know that you're not like just a automaton NPC that, that you know, regurgitates every single lefty position on every single social issue. Like there's gotta be something that you think you know a little bit differently about. So I think that'd be good. But I think that a Democratic candidate could limit their exposure to risk on a lot of these issues the way Zoran did. Like Zoran said a lot of the stuff he's around in New York City, so let's just say that. But the way he did it in the Oval Office, the way he did it on the campaign, which is to make sure everybody knew what the thing that animated you was. The thing that animated him was the free buses and the city run grocery stores and the cheaper rent and the rent freezes and you know, it was affordability, it was the whole altrucks getting that get rid of the red tape so they could sell their yummy delicious food a little cheaper. That was what motivated him. Anybody that paid attention to the race at all knew that that was what motivated him. And so the hits on him didn't really land as much because people were like, you know, he's not up, he's not up maybe on Israel and Gaza. And so that's why you saw a lot of folks for whom that was an important issue vote against him. But all the other stuff on the trans stuff and then defend the police like he, he took the air out of the critics balloon because nobody really believed that that was the stuff that he cared about because he was so committed to making affordability the heart of his campaign and his public image. And to me that's the lesson for the Democrats. And that's the lesson from this Carvel thing about with the woke in with the rage. It's like if you did a pronoun tweet five years ago, it's fine. But de emphasize all that stuff personal and emphasize tangible, specific things. I can already hear JBL in my head. He'll be like, Harris, did de emphasize that stuff? He didn't. She didn't talk about any of that stuff at the convention. Any of the lefty cultural stuff. And that's true, she did, but she didn't emphasize something else. She's allowed herself to be defined because she didn't define herself clearly enough for enough voters around a specific topic or issue that they care about. And in upcoming elections, that issue for almost every Democrat is going to have to be addressing the economic woes, the people and the inequality and the, you know, way to which the elites are playing by different rules that they are. So anyway, Carville nails it once again. He's been on this for a minute though, you little whippersnappers. All right, don't come running around here thinking you invented this. But he, I think brings a clarity to kind of this discussion. And lastly, it brings a clarity to it in a way that like, there's no reason that 80% of the Democratic coalition can unite around all this. You know, there are going to be some Democrats that get really flustered with whatever with some of the economic populist policies, some of the center Democrats, and there are going to be some progressive activists who care very deeply about cultural and social issues that maybe get flustered with some of the tacking to the middle or de emphasizing of some of the things they care about. You're never gonna be able to please 100% of the coalition. But I think that this is a way to unite a whole lot of folks around one vision. Everybody from Zohar to James Carville. That's a pretty good place to be if you're a Democrat. All right, subscribe to the feed. Give us a like comment. Go to the store. We're gonna have a Black Friday sale coming up. We got some new merch. Hope to see y' all here soon.