BONUS EPISODE with James Carville: We Are the Opposition
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Learn more at PenFed.org. Federally insured by NCOA. To receive any advertised product, you must become a member of PenFed Credit Union. Hello and welcome to a bonus edition of the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm here with the Ragin' Cajun, James Carville. He's got a documentary that one of our last podcasts was featured in, and it is live on Max, November 14th. Winning is everything. Stupid. Stupid.

James, the last time you were here, we were talking about a Kamala Harris parade. I guess they rained on our parade, brother. Yeah, well, they did. So let's just say, let's review the bidding. So you and I have been in politics for a long time. And if the country wants something different, you try to give the country something different. And I think that this election really boiled down to two massive mistakes. First,

Nothing we can do about it. Biden gets out July 21st. Understand that there's this massive amount of talent in the Democratic Party. As I say, playing, there's 350 hitters all over AAA ball. We just don't know them. And though she gets out, he gets out on the 21st. I told Adam DeGarne, we didn't even get a chance to kick the tires. We just said, you're buying the car and you have no choice. And of course, we bought the car.

But I think all people like a campaign that is reducible to one moment. And I think if this campaign is reducible to one moment, we're in a 65% wrong track country. The country wants something different. And she's asked, as so often the case in a friendly audience on The View, how would you be different than Biden? It's the one question that you exist to answer.

All right. That is it. That's the money question. That's the one you want. That's the one that everybody wants to know to answer to. And you freeze. You literally freeze and say, well, I can't think of anything. So we said 65% want something different. We are just not going to give in to him. But maybe the odiousness of Trump combined with the Dobbs decision, we can overcome it. Well, we didn't overcome it.

But when we go back and history unearths this, it's going to be right there on The View. And I think her name was Sonny Houston or whatever. Ask the question. And that's the most devastating answer you could imagine. I think that there are some limits to the value of various particular recriminations, given the broad scope of the movement towards Trump. So I want to talk about that a little bit a second. But but on this minor point of Biden.

I think she was also worried about him. I think that he got out, but he got out late. And it also, to me, felt like that there was still an air of sensitivity around all of it. People were walking around eggshells. They didn't want to hurt his feelings. Rather than what should have happened, which is him saying, I'm passing the torch. You do what you need to do to win. I didn't feel like there was a sense of you do what you need to do to win. And I think she was torn a little bit by kind of loyalty and worrying about that.

And I bet you the answer is going to be, and a true answer is going to be, President Biden, people like him. He has a lot of friends. A lot of people really like him. Right. All right. She being one. And look, he gave me, mind you, a big shot in politics. And I'm a loyal person. And I just couldn't do it. I was told to do it. And I think she was. Right.

And I just couldn't bring myself. And, you know, that's why winning is everything. Winning, when you have to win, it's more important than loyalty. It is everything. If you don't win, you have done nothing. And unfortunately, we find that out the hard way. But I am sure that when we are told what happened on The View, it's going to be, well, they had given me the answer, but I just couldn't get the words out of my mouth.

That's a very human thing. But when you're running for president, you're not allowed to have human reactions to the most fundamental question in the election. And that is, how are you going to be different than what you got? And we've loved it. The hardest thing about this for me, James, is that like,

I don't know. Maybe there's some elections where winning is not everything. Maybe there are times in life where, you know, doing the moral thing is important or maintaining your integrity or saving yourself for down the line. But if there was ever a time when winning was everything, it was this time. You're right. And, you know, we've been in elections and you work for Mitt Romney, if it's Obama, if it's Bob Dole or Clinton, you know, you'd be...

You want to win. You know, you think you have better ideas. Here it's just fundamentally the director of national intelligence says it's his view and people in the whole intelligence that he's being blackmailed by Putin. Jesus, how bad can you get him?

But I don't like the price of eggs. Okay. But we're going to pay dearly for this. I mean, we're really going to pay. I do want to get into the price of eggs element of this and the inflation. But one other thing, just kind of about the campaign itself, looking back, that I wanted to talk to you about, because...

Because the last time we were on, I said to you that one of my worries was I just watched the documentary for the first time. And it's showing the old clip of the whiteboard. It's the economy, stupid. What about health care? You had your three points on the whiteboard. The first thing was change versus more of the same. Change versus more of the same. And we were the more of the same candidate. Right.

We stake out a position to be the more the same candidate. And I said to you in that podcast, I was like, what are her three things, right? If yours was change was more of the same, it's the economy stupid. And don't forget healthcare. What were her three? And I just, the big moments were good. The set pieces were good. The speeches were good. The debates were good. So I don't want to come off as like overly nitpicky, but like at the narrative level,

What were the three things? That was something that was sticking in my brain the whole time as a worry that I don't know that regular people knew. We doubled down on more of the same. Yeah. All right. And then the second thing was it actually said the economy is stupid, but if I say it's the economy is stupid, that's fine. And we tried to convince people that it was, and it probably was better than it was given credit for, but that's not a case you're going to be able to make in a month. Right.

So we in health care didn't figure into it. But on the two basic fundamentals, we flubbed it. And people go to all in. By the way, she had every advantage with a united party from Dick Cheney to AOC. Everybody was whatever you want to do is fine. We had more people on the ground. We had more volunteers. We had more money.

All right. We had more surrogates, but we didn't have a reason. And since the dawn of time, since the first Greeks stood in the middle of Athens and said, this election is a choice. All right. And we have had every piece of technology. And you can imagine printing presses, you know, radio, TV, computer, TV.

AI algorithms, it's still a reason is the most powerful, motivating thing in all of politics. And you cannot not have a reason and beat it with technology or beat it with volunteers or do that. And that's the...

Overall message here, Tim. Yeah. A reason. And she didn't give us a reason. I mean, I guess in fairness, the reason I think what they would say is, you know, freedom. Right. Like we're turning the page. But it was it was a little surface level. Yes. I mean, I'm sure I'm going to say, well, we had a we had a housing plan and that you did. Great. The housing plan is number one.

We would have had this process, would have had gone through it, and we'd have had this mega level of talent that exists. And all of these people would have been different. They would have been energetic. It would have created a sense of real excitement. Biden, he just blocked all that from happening.

I'm sorry. Then he goes on to after the election. He says, you know, we're going to be fine. I mean, this is Kevin Bacon. Like, all is well. Calm down. All is well. Just stay in place. OK, don't worry. It's all under control.

Don't you love that scene? I do. Animal House. Yeah. And that's right. And that's what we're going to. We have the animal White House coming. And yeah, I know. I didn't like it either. I mean, I know you feel like you want to be the president and you want to follow the rules. But there are legitimate things to be worried about, you know. And like, I just think sanding down the danger is not really helpful. Life is full of adventures.

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The other thing I really wanted to talk to you about, I mean, thinking about

both the movie and your life, you know, you come from regular folk, you know, and the Democrats, the main takeaway from the election, if you get out of the political strategist stuff with nitpicking messaging and speeches and whatever tactics, like the thematic thing is like the Democrats are,

just did worse across every demographic group. It is a working class, does non-college, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, white, everybody. Like if you did not, if you do not have a college degree and are upper middle class, the Democrats, you know, lost ground with you.

That seems to me like just a massive problem. And I just, I kind of open-ended question. Like, is it fixable? What do you do to fix it? Like, how did the party get here? So one thing I'm no longer criticized for, and people have said, you know what, you're right, James. When I used the term, quote, preachy females, unquote. Oh, boy. That meant coastal, overeducated lecturing, right?

But the other thing that happened in my new name for it, I call it identitarianism. Most people refer to it as wokeness. We couldn't wash the stench off of us. I mean, she didn't embrace it, to be fair to her. She never used any of that language. Walt didn't use it. But people were still remembering that.

And on Election Day, there was a prosecutor in Alameda County, which you're a resident of, I think, or used to be for sure. Yeah, used to be. Which is they called her by 30 points because she was an advocate of identitarianism, which is not even popular in Berkeley. Right.

Yeah, right. Okay. I mean, that's how unpopular. No, San Francisco got rid of their mayor, got rid of the most obnoxious city council member. Oakland got rid of their mayor and prosecutor. We're still dealing, although she didn't, no one talks like that anymore.

The stench of it, it's like I tell people, you know, your clothes, you get fireplace and your clothes smell smoky or somebody's smoking a cigar in the room or you smoke a cigar. And then you put your shirt on the next morning, god damn thing stinks. You got to wash it twice. That's what they did to us. They were cigar smoking our clothes and we couldn't get the smell off. It was bad. And the stench.

And people keep telling me today, well, I don't like the program change. I don't like the left of the Democratic Party. I don't like all that, you know, bullshit. Well, no one we did. It was a mistake. And, you know, I go back and I did that box interview in the spring of 2021. It was just evident that this was a really dumb, backwards looking NPR idiotic move, right?

And of course, we all came to realize that. But it was too late. What do they do? I mean, how do you get working people back? So this is what we do. So Crystal's piece is the rallying point. All right. We're all in an opposition party. Understand that. Understand what our opposition party is. Our opposition party by nature has no power.

So Hakeem or Schumer, you know, maybe they can get a couple of things that they need, but they're not going to get anything. So we have to start acting like an opposition party. This is the most radical. And don't laugh when I tell you this idea. OK, you know how private equity looks to some existing place that has a distribution network, but is a kind of failed company. They're going to buy. We ought to take over the DNC.

They have a charter. They have a building. They have tax exempt status. They can put people in and put communicators in there and put people there and that know how to be part of the opposition and have a research side and crank out the distribution tables on what and settle on a narrative about Trump. And the narrative that I think should be about Trump is betrayal, that he betrayed you.

Look, he wasn't off of change. He said he was for the middle class. He said he was for the working people. He said, and as soon as they do this, you know what they're going to do. You already know they're going to write the tax code for Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. All right, get ready for it. You know it's coming.

It's just, you know it. It's not coming, James. It's not coming, James. It's already here. I'm just pulling this up here. Axios this morning, we're taping this on Friday. Axios this morning, big winners to watch. Oil and gas, crypto and tech firms, Musk's companies, and banks are all poised to benefit from Trump's agenda. Are those the forgotten men? I would like to ask the kind of Latino male question.

that voted for Trump, was this what you were voting for? Do you think that the banks and all companies and Musk, do you think they lack power? Well, yeah, I didn't like, you know, I like to. OK, fine. And we have to tell them that. And, you know, people say I'm going to my kid is going to, I don't know, UCLA and they want to be in politics. What should they study? They should study the history of the Bible.

Because every message in politics comes right out of the Bible. And the whole Trump people, he's King Cyrus. He's the strong guy. No, he's he betrays you. And betrayal is a big is a big part of the Bible. And as opposed to telling people that they were wrong, which is a hard thing to do. Well, you thought he was going to do this and look what he did. Now, you know, that's the only way. But that's the way we come back.

Do the Democrats have, I know that you said they got a bunch of 350 hitters across. And I think that that's true, especially for the midterm electorate, which is much more college educated. You know, the type of electorate of people that show up in off-year elections are much more Democratic friendly. And so I think that they've got a lot of strong bench for midterms. Do they have a good, do they have a strong bench for talking to the working class people that the party's lost? Yes, absolutely. They do.

Absolutely. I mean, you never see Bashir or Spiro or Wes Moore or Warnock. I hate just giving names. But do that and you say somebody. So what they should do, and this is kind of weird, we should have, we did it back in the 80s. We should have a mini convention in the summer of 2026.

And we should invite top tier candidates to speak to the convention and maybe have like a straw poll. You have to create, you have to show people you have all of this talent. OK, we've got to play an exhibition game or we have to have a home run derby and let these guys come up and just crush, you know, batting practice pitches and hit them 400 feet and let people see that.

Let people see that there's help out there. There's hope out there. We kept all of these people. Mitch, you know, they would never do this. He probably wouldn't take it because it's thought to be a dead-end job, although in the right set of circumstances, it doesn't have to be. I would make Mitch the chairman of the DNC. I would have him as the, you know,

Going on TV and putting Paul Begala out there on Sunday morning shows as a communications director or something. I mean, somebody that knows how to deliver a message, knows how to frame an argument, knows how to do all the stuff that we weren't able to do in this cycle.

There's talent out there, dude. We got to have a home run derby. Let them all speak to a fake mini convention in the summer of 2026. There's just so much Mary in the film. I have to ask what she thinks about all this. Well, you know, she's coming up.

but I suspect she's pretty happy. But the really interesting backstory of the movie is the director said, there's two people I have to have, James. I have to have Bill Clinton and I have to have Mary to make this work. And I said, I can get you Bill Clinton, but I can't get you Mary. So he takes her to dinner at Cafe Milano. And he says, he's like,

And he's trying to persuade her. And the actual, the hero of the whole movie is Gore Vidal. Because Matt, the director, used to work with Gore Vidal at Vanity Fair. And Mary had read all of Gore Vidal's books. And Gore Vidal read a really good review of Mary and I, wrote a good review of Mary and I's book in the New York Review of Books, which kind of set the tone, you know, like Gore Vidal's New York Review of Books. That's a good book.

Who's going to? So that was the common thing. So he gets her to say yes. Instead of out in the Shenandoah Valley. And he gets to talk for six hours. But the cameraman didn't have a tripod. And the guy is sitting there dying, you know, holding the camera up. And he's like, no, we got all of this. And she was spectacular in it. I mean, just spectacular. She looked great.

I mean, she was very honest sometimes to my detriment. But, you know, and I think it was good for her to get, you know, some of the stuff out. But the movie would not be the movie without her. Without her, it would have been a pretty good movie. With her, it's way better than a very good movie. And I mean, I know it's a good movie, isn't it, that being...

arrogant about it. It's a good director. It's well put together. It's well lit. It's well edited. It carries a narrative. I mean, the whole thing. But without Mary, it doesn't work like this at all. I agree. All right. What are your fears? What are you worried about? What are your feelings? Everything. I don't know about you. I mean, to start with Ukraine. I start with like

I don't know, right? I'm going to have to sit down with a person to explain to me the Palestinian mind that, in effect, turned over U.S. Middle East policy to Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. I don't know how they could possibly think this was a good idea, but they do. That would be the beginning. So there are three—this is November the 8th, I guess, today? Yeah, the 8th. There are three systems—

in the Atlantic basin right now. There's a category three in the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately, it's going to go west. It'll be by the time it gets to Mexico, it will not. But you have a category three on November. Maybe this is real, but that's just one thing to think about. Climate change, you mean? Right. And of course, the corruption that we're getting ready to go through and the consequences of it are going to be just draconian for the country.

And I know this, and the only thing that we can do is we have to be all part of the opposition. And we have to oppose, oppose, oppose. They got all the power in the world, and they're going to run right over all of the people that voted for them. They're going to run right over all of the other people, and all we can do is like –

Rally to opposition, hold them off, get to 2028. So yeah, James, well, I didn't want to be in the opposition with you, but I'm happy to be in the opposition with you. And we have no choice. We have no choice. You know, it was like the guy that won the Bellavano. And he said, if there was some way for me to run,

I would have run. I didn't want to, but I didn't know where to go. So I just had to shoot everybody. Well, we're going to do the best we can and we'll keep the combo flowing. Thanks for, thanks for always hanging with us and I appreciate, you know, your efforts. Thank you. Go Tigers, man. Go Tigers. Thanks to James Carville. Go check out on Max, November 14th. His movie, Winning is Everything Stupid. We'll see y'all soon. Peace. Thank you. I just lost a long time. But in spite

But in spite of all the wrong he's done, I just cry. But maybe one day you might need to come back. But until then,

You've got me living on this street All of my fears are in vain I've just lost, lost, lost my mind But in spite of all the wrong he's done I just cry, cry, cry

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.